Workers World Party statement
War and the class struggle
The U.S. capitalist government is planning an immense crime,
in front of the whole world. It is assembling a huge force for
mass destruction, armed with the most sophisticated weapons
created by military science. It has openly announced that its
goal is to destroy the government of a small but potentially
prosperous oil-producing nation that has defied its
dictates.
Bush labels the Iraqi leader "evil" and a "monster." His
father stages a special interview to say he "hates" Saddam
Hussein. Cynical and sophisticated liars repeat this
personalized bashing as though it were the profoundest
political assessment.
Since Iraq has done absolutely nothing, these epithets are
supposedly reason enough to launch a war that will surely bring
horrible consequences for the Iraqi people--and unknown risks
to U.S. troops.
The financial pages of the capitalist newspapers are already
leaking inside information on which oil companies from which
countries will be cut in on the profits to be made from Iraqi
oil, depending on how much support they give to the U.S. war.
All this, of course, will automatically be ratified by the
"free" regime Washington installs.
Not since the days of open imperialist domination, before
the existence of a socialist bloc and the rise of liberation
movements in the colonial world forced the lords of capitalist
finance to conceal their objectives and prettify their methods,
have the imperialist politicians been so crass and blatant
about their aims.
On Oct. 26, national anti-war marches on both coasts will
give voice to the growing movement to roll back the war
machine. Workers World Party wholeheartedly supports this
effort and urges the broadest participation of all who want to
stop the war.
This period is reminiscent of when Mussolini attacked
Ethiopia in 1935. Ethiopia had done nothing but resist becoming
a colonial possession--at a time when all the rest of Africa
had been carved up by the European imperialist powers. Hundreds
of thousands of Ethiopians with little more than horses and
light arms fought back against the fascist army, which bombed
and strafed them with airplanes and machine guns.
The League of Nations, established by the victors after
World War I supposedly to preserve world peace, did not really
try to stop Italy's invasion. Much of its debate focused on how
to get Ethiopia to make concessions to Rome. All this was a
prelude to the inter-imperialist struggle that led to the mass
murder of World War II.
The Bush administration, which owes its existence to a fixed
election and the capitulation of the Democrats, has tried to
significantly override, in the name of "homeland security," the
bourgeois democratic political traditions until now tolerated
in most developed capitalist countries. It gives the impression
that nothing can stop it--neither mass nor official resistance
in the Third World, not the strains it has generated with its
imperialist allies/rivals, not the anti-war sentiments of the
masses at home.
But these arrogant servants of the capitalist oligarchy are
short sighted. They are undermining the very basis of their
power. All their vaunted technology is just a pile of junk once
the fury of the masses is unleashed.
The potential strength of the working class to intervene and
change history lies not just in its numerical strength--in the
United States it is the vast majority of the population,
separated by a growing gap from the tiny class of super-rich
owners of capital. Even more important is its strategic role in
production.
There can be no production without the workers--it's as
simple as that. And a modern economy cannot be run by slave
labor. It requires the participation of those enslaved not by
law but by wages and the ideological hold of the ruling
class.
The war drive of big capital--especially pushed by the oil
gang so well represented by the Bush administration--shows no
signs of alleviating the deepening economic hardships of the
workers here. On the contrary. The offensive abroad is matched
by an offensive against the workers and their organizations at
home.
The capitalist economy is doing what capitalism does
periodically: it is destroying some of its own
structures--through bankruptcies and layoffs--because it cannot
continue to expand profitably at the breakneck pace of the last
decade. How deep this will go cannot be predicted, but the
roster of huge corporations reporting trouble is still
growing.
The immediate effect of this capitalist crunch on a working
class far overextended with debt, far under-protected by any
government safety net, and extremely dependent on working long
hours and even extra jobs to pay the bills, is already
drastic.
And now these workers are expected to pay for an endless war
focused on the Middle East but extending all over the world? A
war so clearly to defend the super-profits of the same
corporations that have looted workers' pensions, thrown them in
the streets, and spent billions putting corporate alumni into
the highest political posts while cutting their own taxes?
Those already active in the struggle against imperialist war
have every reason to feel confident that they can win the
support of millions of workers in this country. Even more than
during the Vietnam War period, it is becoming clearer every day
that the interests of the workers and the oppressed peoples are
diametrically opposed to those of the war profiteers, the oil
barons, the bankers who oversee the entire system, and their
criminal CEOs.
Neither frenzied war propaganda nor threats of repression
can turn back this developing class struggle, which will be the
key component in stopping imperialist war.
Reprinted from the Sept. 26, 2002, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyrighted
under a Creative
Commons License.
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