Imperialist war and its atrocities are part of a capitalist world order which sends workers to die for the profits of their national capitalists. So, we reject support for capitalist war from any of its sides, and support workers’ struggle against it: from the most embryonic actions like desertion and refusal to ship arms, to the final revolutionary action that can stop world war in its tracks and open the way for a new society.

This revolutionary defeatist position is fundamentally different from the peace rhetoric of the owning classes. For as long as the working class has been menaced by war, they have also been menaced by the endless waves of spokespeople who – sometimes even honestly – proclaim their faith in “peace” and “humanitarianism”.

On one side of the coin, pacifists try to sell workers peace within capitalism as a way of winning the freedom from warfare we seek. But they fail to see that imperialism and war are intrinsic to this system; the capitalist peace they praise is a contradiction in terms. Instead, the only real opposition to war is for workers to oppose capitalism itself.

Meanwhile, ‘peace’ is such a loyal servant to the system that these pacifists aren't the most common voice you'll hear it from. It comes with every announcement of an increase in arms spending, every jingoist news piece, war preparation, geopolitical manœuvre, hypocritical outrage, strategic announcement, brag about a new weapon, act of mass murder – and forms the glue of the ideological paintjob of institutions like the UN that facilitate them. The other side of the peace lobby is none less than the militarist mouthpieces of imperialist interests themselves.

The Empires’ New Clothes

Peace within capitalism is far from a dead end. Our rulers have brilliantly managed to find a use for it: as a PR exercise, to hide their nationalist and imperialist machinations. The states which have been tearing up the planet between themselves for decades make the most passionate speeches for the virtue of peace, their highest priority – from their war rooms. And what a performance they’ve given us in the last couple of years.⁽¹⁾

Let’s start with the PR war in Gaza. Iran – the same Iran that has been Hamas’ main patron as part of its ‘Axis of Resistance’, supplying it with hundreds of thousands of dollars to fund its disproportionately large military force every year – and Saudi Arabia – its archenemy, waging war over dominance in the Middle East for decades, including massacring hundreds of thousands in Yemen – put their differences aside to call for a ceasefire in Gaza.⁽²⁾ Russia – still blowing apart hospitals and other civilian targets in its war with NATO in Ukraine – proposed a heartfelt pro-ceasefire resolution at the UN Security Council.⁽³⁾

Within NATO,⁽⁴⁾ a handful of smaller states led by President Macron were the first to call for a ceasefire in Gaza, voting for UN General Assembly Resolution ES-10/21 in October. They joined a number of opposition parties: in the UK, the Liberal Democrats and the SNP. But these same NATO states and parties raced to fuel the war in Ukraine; France has spent at least €3.04 billion on military aid for Ukraine so far⁽⁵⁾ and has proposed sending its troops to fight there directly, while the Lib Dems continue to peaceably “call on the Government to continue to help arm Ukraine, including by providing longer-range precision weapons”.⁽⁶⁾

The others took a little longer to have their fundamental historic change of heart, either firmly supporting Israel (mainly the US and Germany) or searching for a soundbite to justify doing nothing. Since March, however, more and more NATO states have criticised Israel’s offensives and backed a ceasefire, culminating in UN Security Council resolutions 2728 and 2735 for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. After quickly sending Israel an extra $26.4 billion of military aid,⁽⁷⁾ even the US seemed to turn to the path of peace with an abstain vote while the Biden administration more actively advocated for a ceasefire, publicly admonished Jerusalem, and threatened to withhold arms shipments. But now, after the drone assault on Israel by Iran, the US has changed tack with the delivery of advance anti-missile equipment to Israel without any concessions from Netanyahu and, notably, the US troops to operate it. Only a cynic would say that the US bourgeoisie has put taming the reach of Iran before finding a ‘peaceful’ end to the massacres and starvation policies in Gaza. After all, Israel has only been the USA’s longest and most secure ally in the middle East since the mid-50s, a key outpost for the imperialist superpower whose power is under growing challenge in an increasingly dangerous world, notably from China.

Thus, Israel has now made it clear that the Hamas attack has given them a perfect opportunity to alter the status quo in the Middle East. Not only has it attacked five other states – in “self defence”, of course – but it can see that the current social and economic weakness of Iran gives it an opportunity to dismantle its “Axis of Resistance”. The attacks on Hezbollah have been followed up by even more bombing in Lebanon, accompanied by even more civilian deaths. In the minds of Israeli planners, more assassinations of top leaders of the Iranian bloc and more massacres of the workers of the Middle East is the route to “peace”.

These are just recent examples. We could probably name a current or recent war for every single even slightly significant capitalist state singing the praises of "peace" today, considering their wars have been raging almost non-stop for the last century. On top of serving a moral cover for criticising their enemies’ manœuvres, bourgeois states cynically use peace to further their own war aims. “War for the sake of peace”, the current casus bellum of the NATO powers in Ukraine (and to an extent Russia, after “denazification”) and Israel in Gaza and Lebanon, is an essential in any militarist rhetorical back-to-school set, from US crusades against ‘terrorism’ and ‘weapons of mass destruction’ in the Middle East, to USSR people’s conquests in Europe, to the “war to end all wars” itself.

Before the first “war to end all wars”, the major capitalist powers organised 'peace conferences' in 1899 and 1907. They might not have achieved peace, but they did achieve two things. On the one hand, politicians can claim to be working against war, or at least make the prospect of their war seem less barbaric by creating ‘rules of war’ to protect artwork and even civilians. On the other, they find a forum to negotiate the conditions of the battlefield.

The Hague Conferences' ban on chemical weapons, for example, served the dual purpose of creating the impression that they were against 'cruel' or 'unjust' weapons, and avoiding the expense, destruction, and risk of mutually deploying them. But warmongering can be a stressful job. Who can blame both sides when they helplessly found themselves using chemical weapons when the war demand became too high? The same logic (not any moral considerations) is actually why they were not used during WW2; both sides wanted to avoid retaliation, and had a better response to trench warfare in armoured breakthrough. As “internationalist” Winston Churchill put it:

It is absurd to consider morality on this topic when everybody used it in the last war without a word of complaint from the moralists or the Church. On the other hand, in the last war the bombing of open cities was regarded as forbidden. Now everybody does it as a matter of course. It is simply a question of fashion changing as she does between long and short skirts for women… ⁽⁸⁾

Winston Churchill to his General Staff, via General Ismay, 6 July 1944

So this is nothing new. Capitalist ‘rules of war’ have always been just as much of a fig leaf for imperialism as the ‘rules-based order’ of capitalist diplomacy.

And yet, some of our rulers have still managed to innovate. A new trend in these pseudo-pacifist proclamations, a sparkly new alternative to the ceasefire, was the ‘humanitarian pause’, attracting the imperialist PR departments of (among others) the EU,⁽⁹⁾ the late British Tory government⁽¹⁰⁾ and Labour then-opposition,⁽¹¹⁾ and leading the charge (apparently through steamy phone calls between Biden and Netanyahu), America. Germany and the UK even unveiled an innovatively deceptive variation on this approach – supporting ‘humanitarian pauses’ alongside a “sustainable” but not “immediate” ceasefire, because peace should only start when the war is over!⁽¹²⁾

So far, these ‘humanitarian pauses’ have amounted to “local, tactical pause[s]” for 4 hours a day, and 11 along Salah Al-Din Road from June. How much these were ever implemented is unclear,⁽¹³⁾ and their impact on aid has been consistently minimal.⁽¹⁴⁾ Gazans must be thrilled to know they (may) have a few more hours to thank their benevolent humanitarian overlords while waiting to be murdered (often with bombs supplied by the same Western powers).⁽¹⁵⁾

In fact, these pauses may be little more than part of Israel’s efforts to “enable the exit of Palestinian civilians from Gaza City southward”,⁽¹⁶⁾ and ultimately out of the Strip entirely. This could suit the Israeli bourgeoisie as their long-term solution for the Strip, as suggested by Intelligence Ministry documents leaked in October.⁽¹⁷⁾ The Intelligence Minister soon proudly retroactively owned these plans in the Jerusalem Post, “for humanitarian reasons”,⁽¹⁸⁾ and started negotiating the “humanitarian emigration” of Gazans into the DRC after Egypt refused.⁽¹⁹⁾ Major ministers of the Israeli cabinet, most prominently Smotrich and Ben-Gvir, have begged for the settlement of the Strip throughout the conflict,⁽²⁰⁾ a level of unsubtlety so gross that even the US government has criticised it.⁽²¹⁾ While the bourgeoisies of the world decide whether it suits their tactical interests to notice it, we could call this “humanitarian” ethnic cleansing.

Even Oxfam has recognised ‘humanitarian pauses’ as a smokescreen.⁽²²⁾ This is nothing more than an attempt to hide that capitalism cannot protect the lives of civilian workers from its devastation, let alone the soldiers and ‘human shields’ it sends to do its dirty work.

All in all, while “urg[ing] all parties to the conflict to take all possible steps to minimise harm to civilians” (UK),⁽²³⁾ or declaring that “it is more important than ever to immediately stop the bloodshed” (Russia),⁽²⁴⁾ these capitalist states send thousands of workers to bleed and suffer and die for them on other battlefields, or even the exact same one!

There is No Real Peace in an Epoch of Total War

There are still plenty of parts of today’s capitalist society who try to promote a different policy, from the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) to humanitarian charities to the Pope. Their answer to imperialism, war, and genocide is ‘peace’. Whether through leftist demos or religious sermons (or both!), they ask us to put faith in peace on both sides, in Gaza, Ukraine, and everywhere else – usually with a ceasefire followed by whatever redrawing of state borders they think can make a peace that lasts.⁽²⁵⁾ Faced by the constantly growing menace of wars that threaten their lives, the peace they promise might seem attractive to workers too. Is it?

Let’s be clear – ‘peace’ here means capitalist peace. The peace the pacifists offer us is peace between capitalists, not peace between capitalists and wage-labourers – whose exploitation, oppression, division, and ever-deepening impoverishment (which the cost of-living crisis is the latest example of in the UK)⁽²⁶⁾ carries on in peace and war.

A lasting capitalist peace sounds incredible – in more ways than one. We’ve lived through over a century of imperialism, and over a century of pacifist demonstrations doing nothing to stop it. If peace is ever achieved (without the intervention of the working class), it is only because the powers involved view it as tactically expedient – because of the defeat of one side, a military stalemate, a change in strategic interests, or even just to regroup and reconsolidate to fuel the next round of warfare (as we’ve already seen in Gaza in the week-long November ceasefire). This cold logic explains the NATO states’ U-turns as supporting Israel was outweighed by other strategic concerns. In other words, capitalist peace never contradicts the permanent strategic imperative of all imperialist powers and their proxies: to expand their area of influence and undermine their competitors’. The same reason they go to war in the first place!

By the international laws of capitalist imperialism, peace can only ever be a temporary ceasefire. Pacifists dream of rival capitalist states peacefully coexisting in the name of humanity and sustainability. But back in reality, these capitalist states are driven by boundless, inescapable competition over constantly dwindling profits, and a need for ever greater accumulation, at any cost, even to humanity and the planet. Capital must always expand its profits, or face being outcompeted and cannibalised by a larger capital. The lower profit rates fall, the more fratricidal our poor capitalists are willing to become in fighting over the meagre scraps of exploited riches. In our imperialist stage of capitalism, competing over control of areas for the export of capital is essential for maintaining their profits – and war is an essential tactic in this.

Even formal peace is only illusory. The two legally coexistent states of Israel and Palestine are already only little more than the daydreams of certain great powers, but they wouldn’t mean real peace even if they became reality. The squabbling gangs of Palestinian nationalist groups are proof enough. Each sponsor has its own breed, from Saudi Arabia's thoroughbred Fatah to Iran's litter (Hamas, PIJ, PRC, and PFLP). Israel, too, is a well-pampered client of the US as well as a regional power in its own right. The Israel-Palestine conflict, alongside other conflicts in the Middle East, is inseparable from the ongoing pageant over the domination of the Middle East's oil resources. Russia has its own foothold in Syria, and China has recently made its grand debut, preparing to challenge the petrodollar by agreeing with Saudi Arabia to trade oil in renminbi. Geopolitically, the independence of Palestine would only mean a new gain for the imperialist players aligned against Israel and the US in the Middle East. The (further) annexation of Palestine by Israel (including the ethnic cleansing of Palestinian inhabitants) would only mean a new gain for itself and the US against its opponents. Either way, nothing more than another move in an increasingly serious imperialist game.

Of course, just because no capitalist state can escape this game isn’t to say that states play equally. The most powerful nation-states find both markets for the export of capital and goods as well as access to raw materials in others. In doing so they look for regional nationalist proxies. Through a local client bourgeoisie, the dominant powers can secure the exploitation of a region and ‘liberate’ it from their rivals’ orbits (right into their own). In addition, having waged ruthless class war against workers at every opportunity, nationalism provides the capitalist class with a pretext to suddenly claim they have a shared interest in obtaining and defending territories for them, from Alsace-Lorraine to the Donbass. National liberation then becomes an essential tool of rival imperialist powers. To counter trench warfare, capitalist imperialism invented chemical weapons. To counter national liberationism, capitalist imperialism invented genocide and ethnic cleansing.

The full development of capitalism (aka the imperialist epoch) has brought war on a previously unimaginable scale – in which national oppression and war are not the exception but the rule, and peace is not the default but just another strategic manœuvre. The bourgeois press – whether pacifist or trying to justify their side of war – paints imperialism, genocide, and war as freak events, caused by mad or misled rulers who have somehow slipped through infallible bourgeois democracy. Believing them might not have been fully absurd 100 years ago, but not anymore. They have been permanent, intrinsic, universal features of the capitalist mode of production since the dawn of the 20th Century. Even a global capitalist economy is subject to the same inbuilt crises of profitability that have plagued capitalism since the dawn of the industrial revolution. Ultimately those crises have to be resolved by a massive devaluation of capital: in the present epoch that ultimately means war on a global scale.

By giving capitalism a semblance of humanity – the hope that inhuman accumulation could go on alongside humanitarian peace – pacifism actually provides a defence for the cause of war itself. It isn’t a big leap to recognise that this is accepting war, as an essential feature of modern capitalism, as long as it has a ‘humanitarian’ face.

Peace is not Enough

So the philanthropist peace-lovers give us a choice. Would you rather sacrifice your life on capital’s battlefields or waste it toiling for capital’s profits?

Together, we can give them our own answer. If workers cross the frontlines, workplace limits, racist and nationalist segregation, union divisions, and all other boundaries dividing them, they can go far beyond holding off a system thirsty for their blood. They can take control of production and political power for themselves, to build a communist society without war or exploitation.

War – between nations and between classes within them – is integral to the capitalist system. Pacifism never really challenges this. In fact, it covers for it, either by serving as rhetoric for propagandists’ respective imperialisms, or defending the system itself. We cannot stop at the false hope of peace. The only answer to capitalist war, just like capitalist peace, is class war.

No war between nations, no peace between classes!

Notes:

Image: Ben Dance / FCDO (CC BY 2.0), commons.wikimedia.org

(1) For more on imperialist hypocrisy: leftcom.org

(2) nytimes.com

(3) press.un.org

(4) Not counting Turkey, which, as usual playing its own game, has supported Hamas outright since October.

(5) statista.com

(6) libdems.org.uk

(7) edition.cnn.com

(8) winstonchurchill.org

(9) consilium.europa.eu

(10) bbc.co.uk

(11) theguardian.com

(12) politico.eu

(13) reliefweb.int

(14) al-monitor.com

(15) E.g. euronews.com

(16) reuters.com

(17) timesofisrael.com

(18) jpost.com

(19) timesofisrael.com

(20) E.g. timesofisrael.com

(21) state.gov

(22) oxfam.org.uk

(23) gov.uk

(24) russiaun.ru

(25) For an extra leftist spin, some groups can add “before the revolution” to the end - as long as this remains in the far future and the back of the £1 paper.

(26) leftcom.org