Marxism-Leninism on War and Army - Just and Unjust wars
The question about the political content and social character of every single war should be resolved on the basis of the Marxist-Leninist principles about the essence of wars, and their economic roots and social sources. These principles are highly important for defining the political line the working class and all the working people should adopt towards each concrete war in our time.
1. JUST AND UNJUST WARS. TYPES OF WARS.
The socio-economic conditions responsible for the emergence of wars, their political aims and the historical role they play in the life of society are extremely manifold. “Wars,” Lenin said, “are a supremely varied, diverse, complex thing. One cannot approach them with a general pattern" [86•1 —there must be a concrete analysis of every war. Every military conflict, evolved by the contradictions existing in definite historical conditions, has its specific features and differs from all others. At the same time the fact that every military conflict has its own specific features does not mean that all of them should not be given a social evaluation in accordance with the class character and political aims of the belligerents.
The consistent use of the Marxist principle of concreteness 87in an analysis of the class nature of war makes it possible to reveal its specific political content and social character. To determine the political content of war means to establish its class character, to establish the reason that led to its outbreak, what classes are waging it, what historical and historico-economic conditions are responsible for it. A study of the content and aims of the policies pursued by definite classes and states long before the outbreak of war enables us to determine the character of the war even before its outbreak. Such an analysis is very important for it enables the progressive classes to adopt a correct attitude towards the war, that is, to decide whether to support or oppose it.
The Social Character of War
The political content of war determines the historical role it plays in the life of society. Depending on their political content wars can have a progressive or reactionary influence on the development of society. It is this division that makes Lenin’s principle of the political content of war so valuable in theoretical and practical respects.
The political content of wars and their division into just and unjust ones are organically interlinked. All moral appraisals of historical phenomena in antagonistic societies have a class-political sense. That is why the moral-political characteristic of a war expresses its class nature. The characteristic is not arbitrary, it reflects the objective role each war plays in the concrete historical conditions. Just wars are distinguished from unjust ones by the progressive or reactionary, liberating or aggressive aims of the belligerents.
Any war that is waged by a people for the sake of freedom and social progress, for liberation from exploitation and national oppression or in defence of its state sovereignty, against an aggressive attack, is a just war.
Conversely, any war unleashed by the imperialists with the aim of seizing foreign territories, enslaving and plundering other peoples, is an unjust war. Such wars, continuing the policies of the imperialist bourgeoisie, are aimed at holding back by violence the logical course of social development, to suppress the revolutionary-liberation movements of the oppressed classes and peoples, and to strengthen the exploiter system.
Lenin always said that there is a close connection between the legitimacy and justness of wars and their progressiveness. 88He wrote that “there are just and unjust wars, progressive and reactionary wars, wars waged by advanced classes and wars waged by backward classes, wars waged for the purpose of perpetuating class oppression and wars waged for the purpose of eliminating oppression...". [88•1 Reactionary, aggressive wars cannot be just, and unjust wars retard historical progress.
Just wars have progressive aims. The political content of a just war is to liberate a people from oppression and exploitation, which hold back socio-economic development.
In this connection it is important to bear in mind that progressive wars waged by the premonopoly bourgeoisie have always exhibited also aggressive unjust tendencies; sometimes these became so important that they changed the social character of the war, transformed it from a war of liberation into an aggressive war. This happened, for example, with the wars France waged at the end of the 18th century, and in the Franco-Prussian war of 1870–1871. Even today the capitalist countries may in definite conditions conduct progressive wars, but the imperialist tendencies of bourgeois policies always assert themselves.
Thus, in the Second World War the armed forces of Britain and the USA fought the fascist aggressors in the anti-Hitler coalition in a war that had a progressive political content. At the same time the Anglo-American ruling circles impeded the development of the liberation movement of the peoples in the occupied countries in every way, obstructed the complete eradication of fascism, and sabotaged the opening of a second front in Europe. They endeavoured to draw out the war and to weaken the Soviet Union.
In all antagonistic formations, both in war- and peacetime, progress is achieved through the ruin and oppression of the working people, at the expense of their blood and sweat. “...History,” Engels said, “is about the most cruel BC/bx 6orHHb [of all goddesses—Tr.] and she leads her triumphal car over heaps of corpses, not only in war, but also in ‘peaceful’ economic development." [88•2
It would therefore be erroneous to regard all historical events that had progressive consequences as just. One must 89not confuse the political aims of a war with its results, must not judge about the character of a war from its historical (remote and indirect) consequences; these consequences are often not a result of the war itself, but of other socioeconomic, political or cultural factors. Among them a special role is reserved for the movement of the masses, who rise to fight for their interests, which are opposite to those of the exploiters, the instigators of war.
The concept of just war can be applied first and foremost to the revolutionary-liberation wars of the oppressed classes and peoples against their oppressors, to the struggle of the working class and other working masses for national independence, democracy and socialism. Such wars, caused by the increasing scope of arbitrary imperialist actions and violence, become an essential instrument for the destruction of the reactionary forces which are obstructing historical progress. Even though all wars involve privations and destruction, revolutionary wars help to regenerate political life, and accelerate the course of social development.
The question about the legitimacy and justice of revolutionary-liberation wars must not be confused with that of the rationale of using military means in the struggle for national independence and social progress. The oppressed classes and peoples take to arms not of their own will. They are compelled to do so by the exploiters. The working class, the working masses rise for the life-and-death struggle against the oppressors only when peaceful means are insufficient to abolish exploitation and oppression, or when there is an aggressive attack from without. In those cases the just, liberation war acquires the character of counteraction by the people to aggression, exploitation and violence by the reactionary classes.
Objective Criterion of the Social Characteristic of
In defining the social character of wars in their time, the founders of Marxism proceeded from the class interests of the proletariat and all working people, which were conditioned by the specific features of the period of premonopoly capitalism.
The most characteristic wars of that time were bourgeois progressive, national liberation wars, which were expressions of the peoples’ struggle for their liberation from foreign oppression and for the formation of national states. Being 90bourgeois-democratic as regards its economic and class content, the national movement in the West European countries then played a historically progressive role: without the destruction of the feudal absolutist establishment, without the liberation and unification of the oppressed nations working class’s struggle for socialism could not have developed.
During that period there could as yet be no talk of a general proletarian movement against the bourgeoisie in all the belligerent countries. Therefore, in defining their attitude to war, Marx and Engels considered the victory of the bourgeoisie of what country would be less harmful (or more useful) to the world proletariat and advocated the adoption by the working class of a policy that would in every way promote bourgeois democratic changes and the creation of conditions for the successful development of the proletariat’s revolutionary movement.
Taking into account the historical tasks of the wars of that period, Marx and Engels characterised them as either defensive or annexationist. They attached a political sense to these concepts, having in mind the liberation or annexationist aims of the war. They justified defensive wars, which were resolving such progressive tasks as the liberation of peoples from foreign oppression and the formation of national states, and called upon the working class to support them. At the same time they condemned aggressive wars aimed at oppressing the peoples and preserving the obsolescent reactionary establishment and condemned the initiators of such wars.
From the first days of its rule the bourgeoisie waged not only liberation wars against feudalism and foreign oppression, but also annexationist wars to seize foreign lands and enslave foreign peoples. Among them were the colonial wars waged notably by the British bourgeoisie in the Middle East, in India, Burma, China and other countries. Marx and Engels characterised these anti-popular, reactionary wars as most unrighteous wars. The aggressive policies of the bourgeoisie fanned up the thirst for loot and chauvinistic passions, which to some degree poisoned the minds of the whole population in the metropolitan countries. This strengthened the position of the exploiters, served them as a means not only for the political but also for the spiritual oppression of the working people.
Such was the character of the wars waged by the 91bourgeoisie in the period of premonopoly capitalism. This period was terminated by the Paris Commune—the revolutionary struggle of the French workers against foreign aggressors and internal reactionaries. Marx and Engels distinguished this struggle, which had a consistently progressive and just character, from the national wars waged by the exploiter classes, for the Commune was to serve as a weapon for abolishing class exploitation as well as the economic basis on which this exploitation is founded.
After the Paris Commune bourgeois society entered upon a new stage. The development of capitalist monopolies, the rule of finance capital and the creation of the colonial system of imperialism greatly changed the political content of the wars waged by the bourgeois states. The monopolists’ main aim became the redivision of the colonies and world domination, suppression of the growing revolutionary struggle of the proletariat and the national liberation movements in the colonies and dependent countries.
The deepening of social contradictions called for a new approach to the definition of the character of wars, one in keeping with the new tasks of the mass revolutionary–liberation struggle. In the imperialist epoch the proletariat has become the historically advanced class fighting for further social progress. Its ideas coincide with the basic interests of all working people, all oppressed nations. In the growing liberation struggle the working class marches in the vanguard of the working people and of all progressive forces. It resolves the historic task of the revolutionary destruction of the system of social and national oppression most completely and most consistently.
That is why the interests of the proletariat’s revolutionary movement and its struggle against capitalism have become the main criteria of all international events, including wars. In our time the legitimacy and justice of wars can be approached only from the standpoint of the proletariat and its liberation struggle. The social character of every modern war must be determined from the standpoint of the interests of the proletariat’s socialist revolution and the national liberation revolutions of the oppressed peoples, from the position of the main driving forces of social progress—the world system of socialism, the international working-class movement and the peoples’ national liberation movement.
This reflects the objective regularity of mankind’s revolutionary transition from capitalism to socialism. Taking this regularity and the new relation of class forces into account, Lenin creatively developed Marx’s principle of the political approach to the definition of the social character of wars. He worked out a general moral-political principle, which can be used to establish a social characteristic of all wars, and clearly formulated the class criterion of this principle in the new historical epoch.
The need for developing the Marxist definition of the character of wars is conditioned by a number of circumstances.
Firstly. In the national wars of the epoch of premonopoly capitalism the belligerents pursued different aims: one side pursued aggressive, the other—liberation aims. Therefore, the former division of wars into aggressive and defensive ones corresponded to the political content of these wars. In the imperialist wars for the redivision of the world, typical of monopoly capitalism, there are no sides “defending themselves”, since the war waged by both bourgeois groupings is annexationist and reactionary.
Secondly. The leaders of the Second International attempted to apply these concepts to a characteristic of the political aims of the imperialist states participating in the First World War. They used the slogan of “defence” to conceal the aggressive aims of that war. Thereby the opportunists finally distorted the concept of defensive war in the new historical conditions. To eradicate social-chauvinism and to formulate new tactics of the working class in wars, it was necessary to get rid of outmoded concepts and to characterise the wars in the imperialist epoch in a new way.
Thirdly. The unprecedented scale assumed by the world conflict made this a question of cardinal importance. The many millions of people who were drawn into the imperialist struggle had to have a clear-cut political orientation. In these conditions the division of wars into just and unjust ones became crucial for defining the political line of the working class, for mobilising the working people in support of just civil wars and against unjust imperialist wars.
Only the Marxist-Leninist theory provides an objective, strictly scientific basis for a moral-political appraisal of wars 93in keeping with their political content. By virtue of its correctness such an appraisal has an enormous mobilising and organising force. Embodied in a moral principle, it expresses the attitude of the working people towards war—the all-out support of just liberation wars and decisive opposition to injust, aggressive wars.
Attitude of Marxist Parties Towards Just and Unjust Wars
A Marxist must establish the character of a war in order to decide what attitude he should adopt towards it. The Marxist parties decisively call for struggle against aggressive, unjust war by all and every means, including revolution. They support revolutionary-liberation wars waged by the peoples for national independence, democracy and socialism. “Socialists,” Lenin wrote in 1916, “always side with the oppressed and, consequently, cannot be opposed to wars whose purpose is democratic or socialist struggle against oppression." [93•1
Defending historical progress and freedom, the Communist Parties mobilise the working people of the capitalist countries for the struggle against the predatory policies of the bourgeoisie. They reveal the causes of imperialist wars, expose the secret of the “birth of wars”, and show the masses the way out of wars unleashed by the exploiters.
The Marxist-Leninist Parties of the socialist countries mobilise the material and spiritual forces of their states to check aggressors and to prevent nuclear war. They work for the peaceful solution of all controversial international issues and condemn war as savage and barbarous. At the same time Communists support the working class’ revolutionary struggle and that of the oppressed peoples for liberation from exploitation, for national independence and social progress. The CPSU and all Soviet people actively oppose all and every aggressive war, including those between capitalist states, and also local wars aimed at strangling the peoples’ liberation movement, and consider it their duty to support the noble struggle of the oppressed peoples, their just liberation wars against imperialism.
The Soviet people decisively support the Vietnamese people in their heroic struggle against the criminal aggression of 94US imperialism. They are firmly convinced that the just cause of the Vietnamese people will triumph. The Soviet people fully support the just struggle of the peoples in the Arab states against Israeli aggression and against Israel’s imperialist patrons.
Marxists-Leninists adopt a concrete attitude to every war, depending on the class aims pursued by the belligerents. In this Marxism-Leninism differs radically from the bourgeois pacifist ideology, which rejects all wars, including revolutionary-liberation ones. The champions of the pacifist ideology hold that the preaching of peace alone leads to an abolition of wars without struggle. Therefore, the pacifist ideology is not dangerous to the militarists, it can be used by the reactionary classes to blunt the vigilance of the masses.
The exposure of the illusory nature of pacifist ideology is an essential condition for the further development of the organised movement of the peace champions, for their consolidation in the struggle for peace and the security of peoples. At the same time all the opponents of unjust wars should be supported in every way, united and drawn into the struggle against the threat of war.
The imperialists assign a special role to the Right socialist parties in preparing aggressive wars. During the preparation of the Second World War the imperialist governments extensively used the splitting activity of the Right socialists, their hatred for the Soviet Union. As a result of the anticommunist policies of the Social-Democratic leaders, Germany’s working class was unable to form a united front against nazism, to prevent Hitler’s coming to power and to rise up in protest against the unleashing by the nazis of the most reactionary war in history.
At present some Right Social-Democratic leaders also directly support annexationist wars, especially wars against the socialist countries, against the liberation movement of the oppressed peoples or the newly independent states.
At the same time the fact that the resistance to the policies of the Right leaders is growing in the Social-Democratic parties should not be ignored. The forces standing for unity of action by the working class, by all working people in the struggle for peace, democracy and social progress are increasing. Marxist-Leninist Parties expose the ideological positions and the Right opportunist practices of the 95Social-Democratic leaders and induce the Social-Democrats to go over to positions of consistent class struggle against the policies of the imperialist bourgeoisie.
The contemporary Right revisionists distort the Marxist appraisal of wars. They depart from working class positions and ignore the fact that the working people adopt fundamentally different attitudes to just and unjust wars. Under the cloak of “impartiality” they substitute abstract pacifism for the class standpoint, and at the same time conceal the fact that imperialism is the only source of war danger. In this way the revisionists, just like the Right socialists, disarm the international working-class movement in the face of the aggressive forces of imperialism.
Extremely dangerous are also the views of the Chinese splitters, who in the evaluation of wars stand on positions of great-power chauvinism and nationalism. The Chinese rulers maintain that the world revolutionary process can develop successfully only by means of wars. Using Leftist phrases they call not for the struggle against war, but for a new world war, regarding it as a positive historical phenomenon.
The international working class and the socialist states can pursue a correct policy in the struggle against imperialist aggressors, for enduring peace, national independence, democracy and socialism, only on the basis of the Marxist-Leninist conception of the character of modern wars.
Social Basis for the Classification of Wars into Types
The decision as to whether the war waged by each of the belligerents is just or unjust is indissolubly linked with the classification of wars into types.
The types of wars are determined in accordance with the main features of the epoch. One cannot understand a given war without understanding the given epoch. Every historical epoch is marked by specific contradictions, differing as regards social content. A classification of wars takes into account the main contradictions or the aspects of those contradictions that are responsible for the military conflicts, and also the social forces clashing in the armed struggle.
Not only individual antagonistic formations, but also different periods of the same formation (for example, capitalism) are marked by specific contradictions. These determine the basic types of wars in a given period. National wars, 96expressing the long-drawn-out struggle of peoples for their liberation and the formation of national states were typical of premonopoly capitalism. Imperialist wars for the redivision of the already divided world and for world domination (unjust on the part of both warring sides) were typical for the period of the undivided rule of imperialism.
The types of wars in our time are determined by the main lines taken by the social struggle. These lines are: the struggle between the two world social systems—socialism and capitalism; the revolutionary struggle of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie; the general democratic struggle of the popular masses against monopoly associations; the national liberation struggle of the peoples against the colonialists; the struggle between capitalist countries for strengthening the positions of monopoly capital. The main, decisive line of the social struggle is the struggle between socialism and imperialism.
All these lines of the social struggle express the deep antagonistic contradictions which the imperialists want to resolve by force of arms. From them evolve the main types of wars in the contemporary epoch: 1) wars between opposing social systems; 2) civil wars between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, including wars against the reactionary forces of monopoly capital for general democratic aims; 3) wars between colonialists and the peoples fighting for their independence; and 4) wars between capitalist states. In* our time there can also be military conflicts between developing countries (the conflict between India and Pakistan in 1965–1966) provoked by the imperialist and domestic reactionaries.
The main types of wars rarely emerge in a “pure” form, several types often intertwine and one type changes into another. Thus, civil wars often combine with the struggle against foreign interventionists, while aggressive, reactionary wars can become civil wars in the belligerent countries. National liberation wars of the oppressed peoples against the colonialists may also go hand in hand with the civil war against the internal reactionary forces. But such combinations do not remove the distinctions between the main types of wars.
In classifying wars into types we regard every war as a two-sided phenomenon, in which each warring side pursues different social objectives. [96•1 The types of wars express not a distinction in kind, that is, one between just and unjust wars, but the historical features of wars arising out of the main contradictions of the given epoch. If, on the other hand, we speak of the kinds of wars, we draw a distinction between just and unjust wars. These two sorts of wars, each individually, are themselves subdivided into kinds, which correspond to the nature of the social forces whose struggle determines the main types of wars. For example in unjust wars we may include the following kinds: imperialist intervention and aggressive wars against the socialist countries; civil wars of reactionary forces against the revolutionary classes within the country; colonial wars against the oppressed peoples or newly independent states; wars between imperialist powers or aggressive attacks by the imperialists on other capitalist countries.
Wars differ not only as regards political content, but also as regards the military technical basis of the armed struggle. In the age of nuclear missiles the consideration of the military-technical character of the war acquires great importance for understanding the historical role of nuclear war in the life of society. Wars are also distinguished by the scale of the military conflict between separate countries or between world coalitions of states.
The classification of wars according to military-technical features only is typical of bourgeois military theoreticians. This is because it is unprofitable for them to reveal the class essence and the aggressive character of the military policies of imperialism. They therefore confine themselves to a “technical” classification of wars, ignoring their class-political content. A typical example of this is the Maxwell Taylor’s book 7 he Uncertain Trumpet, which lays the foundation for the “flexible response" doctrine, according to which the imperialists are to wage wars of differing scale and apply the most diverse technical means of warfare.
In framing modern US strategy three kinds of wars are taken into account: 1) total and limited (as regards scale and aims) nuclear wars with the participation of countries belonging to the opposing social systems; 2) world and local wars without the use of nuclear weapons; 3) local wars against the national liberation movement of the peoples and the newly independent states.
The imperialists resort ever more frequently to local wars, which are limited as regards territory and the means of armed struggle applied. By waging such wars they attempt to strengthen their position in different parts of the world and to weaken the working people’s revolutionary-liberation movement. Lenin exposed the essence of “little wars" and revealed their indissoluble connection with bellicose imperialist policies. Half a century ago he wrote: “...take the history of the little wars they waged before the big war—‘little’ because few Europeans died in those wars, whereas hundreds of thousands of people belonging to the nations they were subjugating died in them, nations which from their point of view could not be regarded as nations at all (you couldn’t very well call those Asians and Africans nations!); the wars waged against these nations were wars against unarmed people, who were simply shot down, machine-gunned___
“The present war is a continuation of the policy of conquest, of the shooting down of whole nationalities, of unbelievable atrocities...." [98•1
Lenin’s evaluation of “little” imperialist wars is still relevant today. It helps to understand their essence and the danger they constitute to social progress. A little imperialist war may grow into a world war which is not limited as regards its scale and the technical means of warfare involved. The “escalation” strategy—the intensification of aggressive military actions in a local war—which is an official doctrine of the US ruling circles, inevitably leads to an extension of military conflicts and aggravates the danger of a world war.
Notes
[86•1] V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 35, p. 273.
[88•1] V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 29, p. 343.
[88•2] Engels to N. F. Danielson, February 24, 1893.
[93•1] V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 23, p. 196.
[96•1] Except imperialist wars, which are unjust on both sides.
[98•1] V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 24, p. 406.
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