22.04.1999

Peace or class war

SWP social-pacifism

There is as yet little sign of mass opposition among the British working class to Nato attacks on Serbia, while among the ruling class patriotic support for the war remains almost unanimous despite reservations. The Independent described the “tiny minority opposed to the war” in the House of Commons as “a strange alliance of isolationist Conservatives like Alan Clark and quasi-pacifists like Tony Benn” (April 19).

The second group in this alliance, the social-pacifist MPs and a few of their friends such as ex-CND leader Bruce Kent, have constituted themselves the Committee for Peace in the Balkans. Leading members of the Socialist Workers Party attend as observers with speaking, but not voting rights. This cooperation between an ostensibly revolutionary party and the social-pacifist fringe of Labourism is both a division of labour and a meeting of minds. The membership of the SWP provides the MPs with the footsoldiers they lack. The SWP press also carries their message that “war leads to catastrophe” (Socialist Worker April 10), and the cost of “one bomb could provide seeds and tools for 50,000 peasants in the Third World to grow their own food for a year.” (SWP Stop the War London 1999, p25).

For the SWP the war comes at a convenient time. With the political committee recently split over the ‘electoral turn’ the anti-war campaign has finally allowed both sides to retreat under cover of ‘more pressing matters’.

The SWP leadership clearly hopes that if Nato sends in ground troops to occupy Serbia and topple Slobodan Milosevic, and British soldiers are killed, public opposition to the war will grow and working class disillusionment with Blair’s government will at last become a reality.

Such a rise in popular discontent is possible, but not inevitable. Nato is working hard to present its intervention as ‘ethical’ and designed to stop the atrocities Milosevic and his forces perpetrate on the innocent Albanian population of Kosova. The same politicians who in their youth wore CND badges unashamedly welcome Nato attacks on Serbia, pretending to have humanitarian, as opposed to imperialist, motives. They are opposed by the likes of Tony Benn, who holds that it is acceptable for the state to use violence within its borders, if it is legal and carefully controlled. This ‘principle’ can be extended to advocating a system of international law, including the use of violence against ‘rogue’ states such as Serbia, so long as it is under the auspices of the United Nations or some other international body. Of course, Blair and Clinton, like all warmongers, say they want ‘peace’ too and claim that Nato’s air raids are fully in accord with the spirit of UN resolutions.

Apart from the Bennites, Nato’s actions are also opposed by some Tories, who maintain that Britain should only get involved in wars where its own national interests are directly threatened. But the more far-sighted imperialists view ‘national interests’ in a much broader sense, requiring global stability for the operation of British capital. In this way it is not only a ‘humanitarian’ war, but one which does indeed serve those interests.

The SWP is also concerned with ‘stability’ - but from a social-pacifist angle. Alex Callinicos worries that

“An Albanian nationalist army, hardened by war and enjoying mass support in refugee camps throughout the Balkans, could threaten the integrity of half a dozen states throughout the region” (Socialist Worker April 10).

In the 1930s SWP-type pacifism was a mass movement in Britain, and millions signed the pledge of the Peace Pledge Union: “We renounce war and never again, directly or indirectly, will we sanction another.” Eleven million people took part in the peace ballot sponsored by the League of Nations, the overwhelming majority voting against war and for peaceful methods of settling conflicts between states. However, when Italy, under Mussolini, invaded Abyssinia in October 1935, the British Labour Party rejected pacifism, and after a conference coup “Labour reaffirmed that the needs of national defence stood as a priority above the class divisions in British society” (G Foote The Labour Party’s political thought p162). In the name of this they fell in behind the national government, which argued that League of Nations sanctions would stem the aggression.

Like the 1930s pacifist movement, the left-Labourite pacifism now being pimped for by the SWP is clearly utopian. Because pacifism denies the need for revolutionary class struggle, which inevitably includes violent struggle to overthrow the capitalist state, it is in the final analysis a tool of the bourgeoisie. As Lenin rightly states: “Pacifism, the preaching of peace in the abstract, is one of the means of duping the working class. Under capitalism, particularly in its imperialist stage, wars are inevitable” (CW Vol 21, Moscow, p162). The working class must therefore rid itself of all pacifist illusions before it can fulfil its historic mission to liberate humankind from exploitation and war.

As Marxists we deplore the misery and waste caused by war, and share the pacifists’ condemnation of both Nato and the brutal Milosevic regime. But we do not agree with their view that all wars are morally wrong. We support the right of the Kosovar people to fight a war of national liberation against Serbia. For us, war and peace should be looked at, not as simply two opposites, but as opposites within a national, historical and class unity.

If humanity is to rid itself of the curse of war, the working class must single-mindedly fight for the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism - in other words, civil war. War is the continuation of class politics by other (violent) means, and peace is the continuation of class politics by other (nonviolent) means. War, and defeat in war, can lead to conditions of social fluidity and instability which provide opportunities for the advance of progressive forces. Wars produce crises which can lead to socialist revolution.

Mary Godwin