Marxism-Leninism on Just and Unjust Wars

Causes of War

The ideologists of the exploiting classes have been trying to make people believe that the causes of war lie in the very nature of man, who, they say, has been bellicose ever since time immemorial. In proposing this preposterous idea they endeavoured and continue to endeavour to absolve themselves of the responsibility for wars, for the sufferings and horror experienced by nations plunged into the bloody abyss of war by the reckless policy of the ruling classes.

Marxism-Leninism has been the only social science that revealed the real causes and essence of wars. War is not eternal. It is a historical phenomenon engendered by the appropriate social and economic factors. In primitive times, when neither classes nor states existed, when production was at such a low level as to rule out the possibility of private appropriation, there were no wars. The further development of production led to the emergence of private ownership and classes. The causes of war are rooted in the nature of a society with antagonistic classes, in the economic foundation of this society—private ownership and the unresolvable contradictions inherent in it. “War,” Lenin wrote, “does not contradict the fundamentals of private property—on the contrary, it is a direct and inevitable outcome of those fundamentals.” [138•*

Wars are engendered only by a society with antagonistic classes, only by the interests of the exploiting classes. Wars are a continuation of the policy of the ruling classes. Exploiters oppress the working masses, frequently using weapons to enforce this oppression. In their drive for profits they conquer and enslave the peoples of other, particularly backward, countries and continuously fight among themselves. As long as society is ruled by exploiters, as long as they hold the destiny of world politics in their hands, sanguinary tragedies will be the unavoidable companions of mankind.

This is proved by facts. Jean Jacques Babel, the Swiss researcher, has calculated that in the course of 5,559 years there were 14,513 wars, which cost the lives of 3,640 million people, which is more than the world’s entire present population.

Mankind moved forward in its development, and weapons became more formidable and devastating. Wars became more and more expensive, costing more and more human 139lives and destroying more and more material values. Recall the enormous loss of life and material wealth in only the two world wars. If world thermonuclear war is not averted, its consequences will be even more appalling.

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Just and Unjust Wars

Wars have their roots in classes. Society, as we know, consists of different, frequently opposing classes. Wars are therefore different, too, as are their objectives, causes and motives.

There are two categories of wars: just, revolutionary wars and unjust, predatory wars.

The first category includes wars fought by working people who have risen to accomplish a socialist revolution against exploiters, if the latter take recourse to weapons against the oppressed; wars of national liberation, which nations wage against colonial rule; wars whose objective is to protect one country or another from foreign aggression. With the emergence of socialism, vital importance was acquired by just wars in defence of socialist states and the world socialist system.

Just wars are progressive and revolutionary. They facilitate social development because they are waged in defence of the gains of socialism against outworn social systems, against exploitation and colonial oppression, and help to consolidate new, progressive social systems.

Had not the victory of the Soviet people over German nazism and the national liberation wars of recent years facilitated social progress? They undoubtedly had because they were a struggle for social progress and socialism and were spearheaded against imperialism. Communists, who are the most consistent champions of social progress, have always supported and continue to support just, revolutionary wars.

The second category are wars against socialist countries; wars waged by exploiters against the working people, against revolutionary and democratic movements; colonial wars waged by the imperialists with the aim of enslaving peoples of economically backward countries; wars which exploiters wage among themselves for economic and political influence in the world.

These are reactionary wars. They are a continuation of the reactionary policies of the exploiting classes and, as such, clash with social development and hinder social 140progress. They are fought by reactionary classes, which arc departing from the stage of history, against the new, rising, revolutionary forces. These wars are started to defend the old and outworn, to preserve and intensify social and national oppression. One of them was the war launched by 14 imperialist powers against the then young Soviet Republic. Numerous colonial wars started by the imperialists continue to rage to this day.

Communists are emphatically opposed to unjust, predatory wars. On the other hand, they link the struggle against wars of aggrandisement up with the social struggle, with the struggle against exploitation, for the triumph of socialism. They are convinced that only the establishment of socialism in the world will for ever deliver mankind from wars, from annihilation and from the destruction of incalculable material resources created by the labour and intelligence of man. Hostile relations among nations will disappear along with class antagonisms, Marx and Engels wrote in the Communist Manifesto. The old, capitalist society with its political insanity will be superseded by a new society, “whose international rule will be Peace, because its national ruler will be everywhere the same—Labour!" [140•*

The policy of peace, of peaceful coexistence has been raised to the level of state policy initially by the world’s first state of working people, the U.S.S.R., then, with the formation of the world socialist system, by other socialist countries.

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Notes

[140•*] K. Marx and F. Engels, Selected Works, Vol. 1, p. 44,5.

[138•*] Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 21, p. 341.