Opening shots

This special edition of Internationalist Notes is entirely devoted to the state of war and the imperialist tensions going on across the world. Napoleon Bonaparte once commented that:

Blood-letting is part of the combinations of political medicine.

Later, the Prussian general Karl Von Clausewitz wrote that:

War is the simple continuation of politics, but by other means.

For internationalist communists, the continuation of imperialist politics implies regular and copious bloodletting.

War is the tribute humanity must pay for not having yet been able or know how to rid itself of the scourge of capitalist barbarity. Once again, we have seen the tools taken from the hands of the workers to be replaced by the gun. Once again, slaughter is the order of the day rather than mutual aid, hate before fraternity, land mine fields sooner than productive fields, the culture of death instead of simply culture... They say that we have no other choice. Capitalism assures us that hope lies in the arms of the Motherland. The priest, the rabbis and the imams promise us salvation through religion. The pacifists, to paraphrase the great Blanqui, resign themselves to ridiculous strolls through the streets and "symbolic" actions, while the leftists, as always, hope to have us all massacred in the interest of some smaller imperialist bandits. Finally the trade-union clowns content themselves with the usual loud, high-sounding lawyers’ stock phrases.

Let’s not forget that the race of vampires is also that of the chameleons. ⁽¹⁾

But in the end, how can we abate the march towards war, avert the coming monstrous bloodshed, ward off the arms dealers and rid ourselves of a system that sows death through its profit columns as if it was sowing wheat in the furrows of Mother Earth? Revolution is an affair of the masses. There is only one social force that can solve the enigma of a finally humanised human history. This force is the international working class, despite whatever the reformist garbage of the ruling class have to say about it. We call on our class, this still numbed giant, stunned by the weight of its labour to rise up and shake off the black mantle of misery that is upon humanity. Let’s help one another! Let’s get rid of this rotten crew of capitalists and their lackeys! Let the verses of the great German poet Goethe inspire us:

Thou must either rule and win,
Or submissively give in,
Triumph, or else yield to clamour:
Be the anvil or the hammer.

Comrades, if we do not want to be the anvil, we must then be the hammer! Its only up to us to be the hammer that will break the infernal war machine, to be the providential sledgehammer that will once and for all smash the chains of our exploitation. That is the content of our time. Such is the mission of our class. But mostly, it is simply a question of elementary survival...

That’s why today, more than ever, we call on our class brothers and sisters to rally to our age-old appeal: Workers of all lands, we must unite!

(1) Blanqui (Louis Auguste) 1805-1881, French revolutionary who was imprisoned 36 years for his communist activity.