The proletariat must reject all sacrifices for the growth of militarism!

"We have all the knowledge, all the economic and demographic strength to deter the Moscow regime. [...] What we lack [...] is the strength of character to accept that we must suffer in order to protect who we are. If our country falters because it is not prepared to accept the loss of its children, because, let's be honest, it will suffer economically because priorities will be given to defence production, then we are at risk." The Chief of Staff of the French Army did not mince his words, and was not disavowed by the political world: the future promised to us by the bourgeoisie of the whole world is the war of each against all! And to wage it, the ruling class needs combatants who are willing to be killed for the nation, and non-combatants who are willing to make draconian sacrifices to produce weapons! The so-called necessity of ‘national defence’ against ‘evil’ foreigners who threaten the country, which of course has no desire to wage war but feels ‘obliged’ (sic) to develop its military arsenal to ‘preserve peace’, is a hypocritical fabrication that has been repeatedly disproved by history.

On this point, the workers’ movement has long since exposed the bourgeoisie's lie. Rosa Luxemburg, in her Junius Pamphlet, already denounced similar nonsense about the First World War:

"Making war simply and solely for the protection of the Fatherland was, by the way, not Bismarck's invention. He only carried out, with characteristic unscrupulousness, an old, well-known and truly international recipe of capitalist statesmanship. When and where has there been a war since so-called public opinion has played a role in governmental calculations, in which each and every belligerent party did not, with a heavy heart, draw the sword from its sheath for the single and sole purpose of defending its Fatherland and its own righteous course from the shameful attacks of the enemy?  This legend is as inextricably a part of the game oi war as powder and lead.” [1] The Gauche Communiste de France, in a report dated July 1945, highlighted another equally important aspect of decadent capitalism: “that war becomes the permanent way of life in decadent capitalism”[2]. We communists have long been warned: capitalism means war! And because of the exacerbation of the historical crisis of this system and the worsening of imperialist tensions, each bourgeoisie is actively preparing for war. But to do so, it needs a docile proletariat that accepts everything that war entails: blood, toil, tears and sweat! Hence, of course, in order to appear less bellicose than ‘the enemy’, the call to ‘protect who we are

This drastic development of militarism in Europe, imposed by the disappearance of the American umbrella, is not a temporary phenomenon, but rather a general trend on all continents. The reintroduction of military service, which is still not compulsory in France, Britain, Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands, shows that the ruling class has understood that it needs to cultivate a more openly militaristic ideology among young people. Russia has understood this for several years, having introduced the army and its propaganda directly into schools. The prospect is for the development of a more explicit and brutal militarist ideology, and this is not only the work of openly warmongering far-right governments. On the contrary, the entire bourgeoisie, from the far right to the left-wing parties, is unanimous on this point.

In France, the return of a form of conscription is welcomed by all parties, from National Rally to La France Insoumise, with left-wing parties proving to be just as bellicose as the others: Mélenchon, the candidate for La France Insoumise (LFI), has been advocating compulsory military service since 2020, and his colleague Panot hypocritically advocates “citizen conscription [in order to] face the major challenges of our century”.  For the Socialist Party, “it is an important element at a time when we know that deterrence must be restored to prevent future confrontations”; the Ecologists are committed to “strengthening the operational reserve to be resilient in the face of attacks, but also in the face of climate and health risks”. In short, all the bourgeois political factions in France agree: to save the nation, we need soldiers who are willing to be killed, we need cannon fodder! In the United Kingdom and Germany, the bourgeoisie has also intensified its campaigns to recruit young people into the army. As UK Defence Secretary John Healey said: “This is a new era for defence, which means new opportunities for young people to discover and learn from our armed forces” [3] (sic).

Far-left parties, like their big brothers on the electoral left, compete in hypocrisy to hide their support for nationalist ideology, but their role is even more to divide the ‘youth’ and hide the fact that war is the product of all nations, of capitalism as a whole.

Thus, the group Klasse gegen Klasse (KgK), a Trotskyist group in Germany, “opposes war, repression and budget cuts” and proclaims “not a man, not a penny for the war machine!”, but does not hesitate to support one imperialist camp against another in numerous conflicts, such as Palestine against Israel or Venezuela against the United States! The Internationale Sozialistische Organisation, another Trotskyist group in Germany, in turn approves of compulsory military service with the aim of “creating a country that cannot be conquered because its people are armed”[4]. What this means is shown by this organisation's encouragement of the ‘armed people’ of Ukraine, leading to a massacre that is decimating an entire generation of workers in that country. In France, the NPA, as usual, puts the division of the proletariat on the agenda: “Universal National Service and Defence and Citizenship Day are instruments in the service of imperialism and capital. They reproduce oppressive and conservative logics that particularly affect young people of colour and those in precarious situations.”[5] Their rhetoric seeks to isolate young people from immigrant backgrounds from other sections of the working class!

These repugnant arguments, which ultimately aim to promote the interests of national capital, are merely a continuation of all the warmongering propaganda spread by all bourgeois factions. All nations are imperialist because they must defend their interests against their international competitors, and all bourgeoisies, whatever their differences, are nationalist because that is the basis of their existence. This is their central characteristic: from the defence of ‘free Palestine’ to ‘America First’, via the ‘defence of democracy’ or that of ‘socialist regimes’, the defence of the nation is the unmistakable sign of belonging to the ruling class. Nationalism is the flag behind which all bourgeois factions rally, from the far right to the far left. The call to ‘defend the homeland’ is just a way of saying that we must defend the national interests of the class that exploits us, to mobilise us for war with all its attendant miseries.

The reaction was immediate in Germany, a country where the militarism of the ruling class has probably left the worst memories: demonstrations by high school and university students took place despite threats from the authorities, bringing together 35,000 participants across Germany, with very clear slogans: ‘Not a man, not a penny for the Bundeswehr’, ‘Too young to vote, but old enough for war’. The explosion of every man for himself is multiplying tensions and conflicts in all directions, accentuating economic destabilisation and increasing the danger of military confrontations between states. The only future that capitalism offers us is war of each against all and widespread misery. But the sacrifices demanded of the working class in terms of living conditions for the military effort can only clash with the current emergence of workers' militancy: the proletariat alone offers a real alternative to the monstrous future that capitalism is preparing for us, and it alone holds the key to escaping it.

HG, 10 January 2026

[1] Rosa Luxemburg, The Crisis of German Social Democracy (1915), also known as The Junius Pamphlet

2 Report on the Inter­national Situation, July 1945 Conference of the Gauche Communiste de France, quoted in The Historic Course [1] adopted at the 3rd Congress of the ICC, International Review n°18

3 Armed forces to launch ‘Gap Year’ scheme for young people to bolster skills and leadership [2]

4 Volk in Waffen, Gegen den Militarismus [3]

5  See the video https://npa-lanticapitaliste.org/videos/contre-le-capitalisme-guerrier [4]