26.02.1998

The last war

From The Call, paper of the British Socialist Party, February 21 1918

The popular cry at the moment is ‘The working class must take control.’ But how?

The present parliament has sat longer than any parliament since the time of Charles II. It began by shortening its own life to five years and is now in its eighth session. Its executive committee, the war council, was put in power by Lord Northcliffe and a particular section of the high finance interests. How, under such circumstances, are the working class to ‘take control’?

The capitalist war, starting with a violent outbreak of the narrowest nationalism, is to end with the ruin of the very thing which was the chief support among the people. As we view with satisfaction the ruin of working class chauvinism, we must find means of carrying on the last war, in which the alignment is no longer national boundaries, but between the working class and the capitalist class of all countries.

The struggle we are entering is easily the most stupendous fact in history. It supervenes upon the great world struggle of imperialism and reduces it to minor importance. Shall we be less bold in our thinking and planning than are the capitalist class? Consider and admire the courage of their thinking. It is that which enables them, a small section of the community, to turn the national life to their own benefit, regardless of the welfare of nine-tenths of the population.

The British imperialists, true to their ‘faithful allies’, who have their own demands to be satisfied, will carry on, without taking into account the sufferings of the soldiers and the starvation of the people. Says the London correspondent of the Manchester Guardian with reference to the Versailles conference: “The most serious and informed comment in the business that I have heard is that the Allies cannot agree on anything short of their several maximum demands.” The imperialists of the ‘enemy countries’ are not less thorough in their cynical thinking and planning.

All the bold thinking of the capitalist class is backed by the action of the working class. The capitalist class alone can only think; the working class can think and act - therein it alone has the capacity for true courage.

We must comprehend the whole field and action must be swift. The authority of the working class must dictate an immediate international conference. Its aim will be the closing down of the capitalist war with a view to the conquest of our own countries by the working class of Europe.

JF Hodgson