Marxism-Leninism on War and Army - Wars between Capitalist states
WARS BETWEEN CAPITALIST STATES
Fyodorov
Wars of annexation between bourgeois states were a constant concomitant of the making and development of the capitalist system. The wars for the division of the world among the capitalist countries were also predatory. The foreign policy of the imperialist powers was always an expression of the struggle for world domination. In this struggle the military conflicts between imperialists assumed the scale of world wars.
Wars of the Imperialist Powers for World Domination
By the 20th century the world imperialist system had taken final shape. Big monopoly associations superseded free competition. The struggle between the monopolies outgrew the national boundaries and became a struggle between the chief imperialist powers for a forceful redivision or the already divided world. As distinct from the past, the struggle of monopolies for world domination became the political content of aggressive wars in the imperialist period.
The world war of 1914–1918 was a typical imperialist war for the redivision of the colonies, for the domination of the monopolists over the world. It emerged as a result of a sharp disturbance of the already unsteady balance of forces between the imperialist powers. A strong predator—-imperialist Germany—appeared in the arena of the struggle for colonies. Germany openly claimed her “right” to the lion’s share in the plunder of the oppressed countries. The states of the Entente, on their part, also pursued predatory aims. They hoped to oust their competitors—the German monopolists—from the world market.
From the first days of the war Lenin and the Bolshevik Party disclosed the deep-rooted economic causes and political content of the war. They showed the working class of all countries that the war was a predatory, unjust one, an imperialist war for the preservation and consolidation of the exploiter system. The bourgeoisie endeavoured by means of war to strangle the growing class struggle of the proletariat in their countries and the national liberation movement in the colonies, to weaken the revolutionary forces by setting up one people against the other.
The Bolsheviks, expressing the interests of the international proletariat, advanced the tactics of revolutionary withdrawal from the anti-popular war. They resolutely exposed the social-chauvinists of the Second International, including the Russian Mensheviks, who preached “civil peace" and supported their bourgeois countries in the imperialist war.
Fighting the social chauvinists, Lenin also exposed the bourgeois-pacifist idea that it is possible to escape the horrors of war without using revolutionary violence against the imperialists. War should be fought not by pronouncing soapy words in condemnation of violence, but by propagandising 124the idea of continuing the class struggle also during the war, when the bourgeoisie attempts to poison the minds of the working people with chauvinism. Under these conditions, Lenin noted, the socialists faced particularly high responsibility, for their task was not just that of changing war into peace, but also of replacing capitalism with socialism, not only of preventing the outbreak of war, but also of utilising “the crisis created by war in order to hasten the overthrow of the bourgeoisie". [124•1 Only such revolutionary activity corresponded to the objective laws of social development.
The First World War created a revolutionary situation in most warring countries and ushered in the era of social revolutions. Under these conditions it was the duty of socialists to develop the workers’ class consciousness, to support all revolutionary actions, to conduct a line aimed at transforming the imperialist war between nations into a civil war of the oppressed classes for socialism.
These new tactics fully reflected the relation of class forces in the period of imperialism and determined the proletariat’s new tasks in the struggle for the revolutionary withdrawal from the world war. The internationalists in all belligerent countries were to follow this line in order to destroy imperialism by the concerted efforts of the international proletariat.
The 1914–1918 war did not resolve the contradictions of capitalism, it aggravated them. The contradictions between the victor and the defeated countries, and also between the imperialist camp and the first socialist country, were added to the former main contradictions: those between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, between the colonies and metropolitan countries, and the one between the imperialist countries themselves. The contradictions between the two opposing social systems began to dominate international life.
The policies of the imperialist states were aimed first and foremost at preparing and unleashing war against the Soviet Union. Nazi Germany was assigned an important part in these aggressive plans. The monopolists of the USA, Britain and other countries gave her enormous financial assistance and this made it possible to equip the German army with first-rate weapons. Hitler Germany prepared intensively for 125a big aggressive war and her monopolists were hatching plans of establishing world domination.
Nazi Germany began the Second World War by invading Poland (September 1, 1939). While the fault for this war lies with all imperialist powers, with the entire system of imperialism, its initiator was the bloc of the fascist states, which set itself the aim of destroying the USSR, of annihilating millions of people, of enslaving the peoples of the Soviet Union and other countries. The war waged by Germany had a most reactionary and aggressive character, insofar as nazism was world imperialism’s most violent and predatory detachment. Even before the beginning of the war the Hitlerites destroyed all remnants of bourgeois democracy in Germany, seized a number of European countries and openly proclaimed their intention to enslave the whole world.
The reactionary aims of the nazis—to deprive all peoples of state independence and the right freely to decide their destiny—made this war a mad adventure. Lenin emphasised in his time that the existence (and formation) of national states is typical of the civilised world. The fascist aggressors attempted to suppress this objective trend by crushing the state sovereignty of many European nations. The struggle against this adventure, for the restoration of democratic freedoms and national independence of the peoples was the main task of the enslaved peoples’ anti-fascist war.
The governments of the Western powers pursued different aims. They fought not fascist reaction, but their competitors, and at the same time encouraged them to turn their guns against the USSR. In nazi Germany they saw not so much an enemy as a class ally in organising a “crusade” against the East.
Hence it was not only nazi Germany, but also the AngloFrench ruling circles that pursued aggressive, reactionary aims. The war had an imperialist character on both sides. [125•1
At the same time the Second World War differed essentially from the First. In the latter the warring sides fought primarily for the redivision of the colonies. In the Second World War Germany strove to destroy the Soviet Union, to win world domination and to establish a fascist regime in all countries. The nazi aggression posed an enormous threat to mankind and condemned many peoples to destruction.
Under these conditions the tactics the working class had adopted during the First World War could not be mechanically applied in the bourgeois-democratic countries. The fight against the nazi “new order" advanced the general national task of consolidating all freedom-loving forces to the foreground. The Communist Parties of Britain and the USA supported the military measures of their governments, strengthened the united national front. At the same time they exposed the ignoble designs of the imperialists to draw out the war in order to weaken the USSR and to suppress the Resistance movement.
The growing struggle of the peoples in the occupied countries changed the political content of the war. It gradually became a war for liberation. When the USSR joined the struggle against nazi Germany, which -had treacherously invaded it, this completed the transformation of the Second World War into an anti-fascist, liberation war on the part of the countries of the anti-Hitler coalition.
The tendency of anti-fascist struggle, having become dominant after Germany’s invasion of the USSR, had an enormous impact on the further development and the victorious outcome of the war. The treacherous plans of the imperialists could not weaken this tendency. They were given a sharp rebuff by all freedom-loving peoples, including millions of people in Britain and the United States, who wanted to continue the war to the utter rout of the German fascist armies.
The might of the Soviet state and the unrelenting will of the popular masses were the most important factor for victory. The people were the main force in the anti-Hitler coalition and it was their active participation that determined the anti-fascist character of the war. This fact reflects the historical changes that had taken place in the relation of the social forces in the international arena after the triumph of socialism in the USSR.
Heading the powerful coalition of the peoples, the Soviet Union played a decisive role in the rout of German nazism and Japanese militarism. By its victory it exerted an enormous influence on the social development of the European and Asian peoples. No matter how much the imperialists and their ideologists falsify the results of the Second World War, no matter what arguments they use to slander the Soviet Union, they are unable to refute historical truth. The victory over the nazi aggressors was won by the joint efforts of many peoples. The powerful anti-Hitler coalition formed in the course of the war. Serious blows were delivered to the enemy by the armies of the Western allies, the allied troops of Poland, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia, and the members of the Resistance movement. It was, however, the Soviet people and their heroic army that bore the brunt of the war and played the decisive role in the defeat of nazi Germany.
The Possibility of New Wars Between Bourgeois States
The main contradiction of today—the contradiction between the two opposing social systems—does not exclude the other deep antagonisms of imperialism. Alongside with the tendency to unite all reactionary forces against socialism there operates also the opposite tendency towards the exacerbation of the contradictions between the imperialist powers.
It would, however, be premature at present to draw the conclusion that the forces disuniting the bourgeois states predominate over the forces uniting them. One thing, however, is certain, namely, that the plans of the USA to unite the whole capitalist world under its aegis have failed. Having restored and expanded their productive apparatus, the countries of capitalist Europe and Japan have become competitors of the US monopolies. They have re-established the positions they lost on world markets and are stepping on the toes of the USA.
In Europe the process of economic integration goes hand in hand with the political disintegration of the West European states and the growth of contradictions between them. These contradictions arise when international issues have to be decided and also where these connected with the “internal” problems of the imperialist camp (for example, with the solution of political and military strategic questions 128in NATO) come under discussion. The contradiction between France, on the one hand, and the USA, FRG and other imperialist countries on the other, led to France’s withdrawal from the military organisation of NATO. The criminal war in Vietnam has resulted in the moral isolation of the USA, has exacerbated the already existing contradictions and evolved new ones between the imperialist powers.
Naturally, acute inter-imperialist contradictions between the USA and West European countries, or within Western Europe, do not weaken the class solidarity of the imperialists on both sides of the Atlantic against world socialism and the revolutionary liberation movement. However, this solidarity cannot overcome the contradictions of imperialism—they emerge from its nature and are a source of wars. Although in modern conditions wars between capitalist countries are extremely unlikely, the possibility of their outbreak must not be excluded. Under definite conditions the struggle of the monopolists can lead to military conflicts between capitalist states.
The possible military conflicts within the capitalist camp may assume the form of an imperialist war on the part of both warring sides, or that of a one-sided aggression by a big imperialist predator against a weaker capitalist country, or, finally, of an attempt by some bourgeois country that has become a vassal of foreign capital, to defend its state sovereignty.
In the first case both sides would pursue annexationist, anti-popular aims, and the war would be unjust on the part of both. In the second and third cases one of the sides would (though not consistently) express the interests of the bulk of the population and wage a liberation war.
question arises whether or not in the period of imperialism there can be a just, national war of one capitalist country against the aggressive actions of the other. The question of national wars waged by capitalist states was widely discussed at the beginning of the century. During the First World War the Left Social-Democrats in Germany declared that there can be no national wars under imperialism.
Lenin opposed that thesis. He held that the definition of the First World War as an imperialist one should not be extended to all possible wars under imperialism, that national movements against imperialism should not be disregarded.
Bringing to mind Rosa Luxemburg’s view about the possible transformation of national wars into imperialist ones, Lenin showed that the possibility of such transformation does not mean that we should ignore the qualitative distinctions between them and deny the progressive nature of national liberation wars. He proved that under imperialism it was logical for such wars to be fought not only by colonial and semi-colonial peoples but also by capitalist countries falling victim to aggression by other imperialist states.
Even in Europe we must not exclude the possibility of national wars breaking out during the imperialist epoch. Lenin wrote in the article “The Junius Pamphlet”, which was directed against Rosa Luxemburg’s erroneous views, that “this ‘epoch’ by no means precludes national wars on the part of, say, small (annexed or nationally-oppressed) countries against the imperialist powers...". [129•1 Lenin thought it was possible for a big national war to break out in Europe if several viable national states should be enslaved by a stronger imperialist predator striving after world domination.
Such a situation was to take shape two decades later, when Nazi Germany violated the national sovereignty of a number of European countries and openly declared her intention to place the world in slavish dependence on the “Aryan race”, the German masters. All peoples were threatened with enslavement and destruction, and many of them were actually made to suffer by the fascist thugs. Defending their life the freedom-loving people rose for the great national war against their enslavers. In this war the peoples of the world defended their democratic rights and freedom and fought to preserve their state sovereignty.
The Second World War demonstrated that in the contemporary epoch bourgeois states can wage national liberation wars, provided they express general national interests. Moreover, under definite circumstances such wars are not excluded against new pretenders to world domination.
National wars directed against aggressors and oppressors are just; they promote the progressive development of society. The slogan of defending the motherland in such a war is both logical and justified. It expresses the true interests of the working people and does not contradict the principle of proletarian internationalism. The proletariat cannot remain indifferent to the fate of its country.
The Marxist-Leninist Parties of the working class are heading the struggle of the peoples for freedom and democracy against external and internal reactionary forces who are betraying the interests of the nations. Such a struggle is legitimate and just, it merges with the broad general democratic and socialist movement.
Notes
[124•1] V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 13, p. 80.
[125•1] The Communist Parties gave this appraisal to the war immediately after its outbreak. The Appeal of the Executive Committee of the Communist International published on the occasion of the 22nd Anniversary of the October Revolution said: “War rages in the very heart of Europe. The ruling classes of Britain, France and Germany fight the war for world domination. This war is a continuation of the perennial imperialist competition in the capitalist camp.... Such are the genuine aims of that war, an unjust, reactionary, imperialist war.” (Kommunistichesky International, Nos. 8-9, 1939, pp. 3-4).
[129•1] V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 22, p. 311.
.jpg)
