Why Marxists Don't Oppose All Wars
Reprint from "Socialist Outlook" No. 1
This 1991 article from Socialist Outlook exemplifies the classical Trotskyist position on war - supporting wars of national liberation and class struggle while opposing inter-imperialist wars, maintaining revolutionary defeatism toward one's own bourgeoisie, and understanding war through the lens of materialist class analysis rather than abstract moral categories. The reference to Lenin's position during WWI and the October Revolution reflects the tradition's commitment to revolutionary internationalism over social patriotism.
Opposition to needless death and suffering is a driving force behind most who turn to socialism: but why is it that marxists refuse to join the pacifist denunciation of all wars? HARRY SLOAN explains.
IT TAKES TWO to tango, and it takes two sides to make a war. But though locked in a mutual, deadly battle, the two combatants will by no means always be equal in the eyes of the working class and the oppressed.
War has been correctly described as nothing more than the 'continuation of politics by other means'; and just as there are many variations of political struggle, so there is a whole spectrum of types of war.
Unlike pacifists, who denounce any war regardless of the specific circumstances, marxists seek to make a concrete judgement on each war as it occurs. Before we decide our attitude, we want to analyse who is waging it, and on behalf of which class interests.
Class struggle
Unlike pacificism, marxism starts not from moral abstractions, but from a materialist analysis which makes it possible to understand the inevitable connection between wars and the class struggle within each country. We also know that wars cannot be 'abolished' unless capitalism, which has carved the world into rival states and which perpetuates exploitation and oppression, is overthrown.
As socialists seeking the overthrow of capitalism we recognise the legitimacy of civil wars, those waged throughout history by the oppressed against their oppressors (slaves against slave-owners; serfs against feudal lords; workers against the capitalist class).
Equally we support wars of national liberation, in which oppressed nations fight military occupation or colonial domination by a 'great' imperialist power.
Taking sides
Civil wars and wars of national liberation therefore call upon socialists to do more than abstractly decide an approach: they place a duty upon socialists to take sides with the oppressed against the oppressor, to lend solidarity, and to build working class opposition to the war efforts of our 'own' ruling class and other imperialist ruling classes.
Hence the obligation on British socialists to build solidarity with the Irish struggle for self-determination and to fight in Britain for the immediate withdrawal of troops from the six counties.
For marxists it is the concrete class analysis of the given war that decides our line. While we support the insurgent struggle of the FMLN liberation forces in El Salvador against the US-backed regime, for example, we also supported the Sandinista government in Nicaragua in its war against the US-backed 'contra' guerrillas who were fighting to turn back the gains of the 1979 Revolution and install a pro-US regime.
Not neutral
However there are other types of war, notably between rival imperialist powers, or between two equally reactionary regimes, in which marxists can lend support to neither side. However this does not mean we adopt a passive, 'neutral' policy: rather the task in these situations is to seek ways for the working class in each warring country to exploit the war crisis in its own interests.
In World War 1, Lenin showed how six 'great' powers controlled empires that effectively enslaved half a billion people, and that war was effectively a struggle between these 'imperialist' nations over the spoils. The interests of the working class could not be served by supporting any of the warring capitalist governments:
"It is not the business of Socialists to help the younger and stronger robber (Germany) to rob the older and overgorged robbers. Socialists must take advantage of the struggle between the robbers to overthrow them all.
"To be able to do this, the Socialists must first of all tell the people the truth, namely that this war is in a treble sense a war between slave-owners to fortify slavery...."
(Socialism and War, 1915)
In taking this line of principled opposition to the imperialist war, arguing that in each country the 'lesser evil' was the military defeat of the government, and calling instead for the war to be turned into civil wars for the overthrow of each imperialist government, Lenin found himself in a tiny minority within the Second ('socialist') International.
Bolsheviks
But in October 1917 it was precisely the Bolsheviks' stance of internationalist opposition to the imperialist war effort that enabled Lenin to win mass support among the urban workers and the peasant-based army, opening the road for the October Revolution. Elsewhere, the pro-war 'socialist' parties played a very different role, each in their own way assisting the reconstruction and consolidation of capitalism.
Today's social democrats have learned nothing and forgotten nothing from their infamous forebears, who so slavishly voted in August 1914 for war credits to assist their 'own' ruling classes slaughter 'foreign' workers.
Labour's recent dismal display of 'bi-partisan' support for the imperialist Gulf War comes from the same party whose leaders backed US slaughter in Korea and Vietnam, and who themselves sent British troops to repress the Irish national struggle in 1969.
The working class has no interest in fighting to defend any capitalist government.