This year sees the 60th anniversary of some of the final acts of the end of the Second World War. From Washington to London to the beaches of Normandy, one of the central ideological themes of the Allies' commemorations has been the continuity between the 'Good War' against fascism, and the post 9/11 'War on Terror'.

In his radio address on the day of the dedication of the National World War II Memorial in Washington, George Bush said that, "this Memorial will stand forever as a tribute to the generation that fought that war, and to the more than 400,000 Americans who gave their lives. Because of their sacrifice, tyrants fell; fascism and Nazism were vanquished; and freedom prevailed." (https://www.whitehouse.gov [1], 29/5/04). Indeed, the construction of the Memorial itself is the result of a long campaign by those in the media who hyped up the mythology of the 'Great Generation' (epitomised by the film 'Saving Private Ryan' and the TV series 'Band of Brothers'). In reply to this campaign, Internationalism - the ICC's section in the US - pointed that "the media has been intent on demonstrating that wars can be good, wars can be popular, and that war is heroic. They are trying to take advantage of the aging veterans who are reportedly dying at the rate of several thousand a day - the fathers and grandfathers of the current generations of the working class, which has not been ideologically defeated by the ruling class and convinced to sacrifice itself for imperialism - to glorify the "honor" of imperialist slaughter." ('Remembering the 'Greatest Generation': Media campaign to glorify imperialism [2]', Inter 116, Feb/Mar 2001).

For Bush, the same 'great honour' has befallen the sons and daughters of the Great Generation. "Today, freedom faces new enemies, and a new generation of Americans has stepped forward to defeat them. Since the hour this nation was attacked on September the 11th, 2001, we have seen the character of the men and women who wear our country's uniform. In places like Kabul and Kandahar, Mosul and Baghdad, we have seen their decency and brave spirit. And because of their fierce courage, America is safer. And two terror regimes are gone forever, and more than 50 million souls now live in freedom." (ibid). Of course, there are those rivals of the US that are unhappy with the portrayal of the most recent war in Iraq as a "Good War", particularly in France (and also some within the British bourgeoisie). Referring to Bush's planned visit to the Normandy beaches in early June, one of the French Presidents' close advisors is reported to have said, "He'd better not go too far down the road of making a historical comparison because it's likely to backfire on him... [T]he French would not appreciate any public mention linking the events. Photographs of US soldiers torturing Iraqi prisons do not sit well with the image of D-Day heroes." ('Bush warned against comparing D-Day to Iraq', The Guardian, 2/6/04.)

Furthermore, while some may make criticisms of the US in drawing an analogy between the 'Good War' against fascism and the letter day 'War on Terrorism', the underlying assumption remains that WWII was somehow 'different', heroic and above criticism. Indeed, the mythology of WWII is such a key to all current bourgeois propaganda that it is considered insane (or fascist) to be against it! The ICC has on several occasions had to defend the PCI's article 'Auschwitz or the Grand Alibi' against those who accuse it of being somehow revisionist (see 'Nazism and democracy share the guilt for the massacre of the Jews [3]', IR113). However, WWII was different from previous wars in two respects. Firstly in the total ideological defeat inflicted upon the working class since the end of the international revolutionary wave of 1917-24: the bourgeoisie had learnt that to avoid a repeat of October 1917 it had to have the working class fully supportive of the 'national interest'.

Secondly WWII was unique in the unprecedented level of barbarism on both sides. "For five years the world was shaken by an orgy of destruction and unprecedented levels of barbarity. The most obvious expression of this was the Nazi death camps and the wholesale genocide against the Jews, gypsies etc. But this barbarity was seized upon by the Allies at the end of the war to serve as an alibi for their own slaughter of millions of innocent people in the war. This slaughter took many forms: the policy of terror bombing all German cities ("An offensive of extensive bombing could sap the morale of the enemy providing it is directed against the working class areas of the 58 German towns which have a population of more than 100,000..." - Linndeman, Churchill's adviser, March 1942, quoted in International Review No 66); the bombing of cities in France and other occupied areas during the war and after D-day (for example Caen and St Malo were flattened in '44); the carefully calculated atomic liquidation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki; the forced starvation of millions in West Bengal in 1943 - approximately three million died when the crops were taken to feed the troops... As regards the death camps, the Allies didn't mention them until the end of the war, though they knew about them. In fact when then the SS offered to release a million Jews in exchange for 10,000 lorries or other goods the Allies refused. In 1943, Roosevelt made clear the thinking behind such a refusal: "transporting so many people would disorganise the war effort" (Churchill's Memoirs, Vol 10). Thus, the refusal to help the Jews, the starvation and bombing of civilian populations were not signs of moral weakness but part of the logic of imperialism: nothing must get in the way of the war effort." ('Imperialist slaughter dressed up as democracy [4]', WR227, September 1999).

The main idea the bourgeoisie would have the working class believe is that it owes its 'freedom' and 'security' to those imperialist nations who defeated their rivals, that war is a 'necessary evil' if 'freedom' is to be victorious. Again Bush says, "Through our history, America has gone to war reluctantly because we have known the costs of war... Those who have paid those costs have given us every moment we live in freedom, and every living American is in their debt." (ibid.) A freedom which has seen more deaths from imperialist war since World War Two than during it. Every moment where children die from curable diseases and starve while food is destroyed because it can't be sold profitably. Every moment workers receive their redundancy notices and their whole lives and families are thrown into chaos and insecurity. Every moment where mothers hold their babies infected with HIV not knowing which of them will survive the longest. Every moment rainforests are cleared and turned into deserts

What price 'freedom'?

While the bourgeoisie seek to cynically manipulate the remaining veterans of D-Day, encouraging them to relive times they'd much rather forget - capturing on video their tears and sorrow - the responsibility of the communist left is to remind the working class that while millions of workers were slaughtering each other on the beaches of Northern France and elsewhere, there still remained tiny minorities who had remained faithful to the proletarian principles of internationalism. On this 60th anniversary of D-Day we are again republishing the Manifesto of the Communist Left to the Workers of Europe (June 1944). We hope that this Manifesto will speak to the 'New Generation' of how all wars in the epoch of capitalism's decadence are imperialist, that they are never in the interests of the working class. And most importantly of all, the Manifesto points to the Russian Revolution, which was the proletariat's answer to the horrors of the First World War, and is a beacon that proves that the only way to bring permanent relief from the infernal spiral of capitalist war and economic crisis is the communist revolution of the proletariat.

As we said in 2001, "Rather than celebrate the imperialist butchery as the bourgeois ideological campaign tries to do, to genuinely honour the suffering and hardships of our fathers and grandfathers requires that the working class today guarantee that capitalism will never again lead humanity into another orgy of destruction and murder, that the working class today destroy the capitalist system. This generation, and the generations to come, have challenges waiting. There is a real need to fight the most important war, the war against the decadent capitalist system. Such a revolutionary struggle, on an international scale, can develop the basis for a new society freed from the rule of capital and controlled by the vast majority of the population - the proletariat." (Inter 116 [2]).

Trevor, 3/6/04.

This article was written for our German publication Weltrevolution, no 118 ('Internationalist voices against the war'). It was written in response to a growing number of groups and elements who are searching for an internationalist response to the capitalist war-drive. As such its arguments are not merely of local significance but can be applied to many similar efforts throughout the world, including Britain. We will come back to some of the latter in another issue of WR.

When the Iraq war was unleashed a year ago there were a number of voices that took up a postion against the war from an internationalist point of view and which unequivocally denounced both imperialist sides. In our press we mentioned several of these voices Apart from the importance of the condemnation of the war from the point of view of the working class and the denunciation of the so-called 'peace camp' (Germany, France etc.), we pointed out that there are a number of different approaches to explaining the roots of the war. Now, one year after the war, we want to come back to some of these explanations, because revolutionaries are obliged to verify their analysis of the situation and the perspectives in the light of reality.

Why was the war waged? One central theme of the explanations of some groups was that the war was unleashed in order to give a boost to the economy. Thus the Frankfurt Proletarian Circle wrote: "Imperialist wars are not just a simple mistake of the system, a mere coincidence, which flows from the antagonistic interests of the states and the companies and their struggle to acquire oil. Wars are an expression of the crisis of the capitalist world system. A promising way out of this economic crisis, which all the industrial states are presently experiencing, is war. This is the option that the USA is presently choosing. Since capitalism is constantly hit by the crisis, the violent destruction of commodities and capital, the redistribution of the market, resources and zones of influence - that is war - have become a cyclical necessity. The 'peaceful' roads of capital maximisation, as we constantly see them in the form of mass lay-offs, worsening of the relations of exploitation, destruction of social welfare and hostile take-over bids, are no longer sufficient for the long-term profit maximisation." ('No peace in Iraq, no peace with the imperialist system!') Unfortunately we do not know what the comrades of the Proletarian Circle say about the subsequent developments because the circle has since dissolved.

On the one hand, the war filled the pockets of the armaments companies and those companies who received contracts through the reconstruction programme. But does it mean that the US economy has recovered since the war? Is the economy about to recover?

According to US figures, the costs of the war during its 'hottest phase' amounted to some $70 billion - if there are any realistic figures at all. To these figures we have to add the cost of the occupation forces: 145,000 US-soldiers require about $1 billion a week, which amounts to more than $50 billion a year - with no end of the occupation in sight. Furthermore, we have not mentioned the cost of the British, Polish, Spanish, Korean, Japanese troops, and that the cost of their maintenance is also being financed to some extent by the USA. The total costs of the war far exceed the revenue of the armaments companies and of those companies that received contracts for reconstruction.

The idea that war serves as a boost for the economy is a naive miscalculation, because in reality this war will mean a gigantic blood letting, a real haemorrhage, for the US state and for US capital. Both the immediate costs of war as well as the entire armaments programme adopted under Bush have led to the biggest budget deficit in the history of the USA. While the budget surplus during Clinton's last year in office was still $120 billion (due to the brutal austerity policy of the Democratic President at the expense of the working class), now, after 3 years of intensive rearmament under the Bush administration, the USA will be facing a deficit of more than $500 billion. All in all, this amounts to an increase of more than $600 billion. In 2005 armaments expenditure is scheduled to rise by 7% to $402 billion, yet the cost of the operations in Iraq and Afghanistan are not yet included in these figures. In 2003 alone, the USA spent some $10 billion for its 9,000 troops in Afghanistan, while the country itself received only some $600 million in 'development aid'. The budget of the Ministry for Homeland Defence is scheduled to increase by 10% to $33.8 billion. Thus under Bush 'defence expenditure' will have risen by a third. What were these $600 billion spent on? Maybe a small portion on civilian recovery programmes (certainly not on programmes for fighting poverty), but a large part has certainly been poured into the war machine.

Contrary to the position of the Frankfurt Proletarian Circle, the ICC thinks that, "The wars of decadence, unlike the wars of ascendancy, do not make economic sense. Contrary to the view that war is 'good' for the health of the economy, war today both expresses and aggravates its incurable sickness�War is the ruin of capital - both a product of its decline and a factor in its acceleration. The development of a bloated war economy does not offer a solution to the crisis of capitalism...The war economy does not exist for itself but because capitalism in decadence is obliged to go through war after war after war, and to increasingly subsume the entire economy to the needs of war. This creates a tremendous drain on the economy because this expenditure is fundamentally sterile...The present war in the Gulf, and more generally the whole 'war against terror', is linked to a vast increase of arms spending designed to totally eclipse the arms budgets of the rest of the world combined." (from the 'Resolution on international situation', adopted by the 15th International Congress of the ICC, which took place at the time of the war).

From an economic point of view the goals of the war have become more and more irrational. Because of the war the US state undermines the competitiveness of its economy. Even if some armaments companies make gigantic profits, the US state itself has to increase its debts astronomically. The money that flows into the pockets of the armaments companies in reality is financed by the credit policy of the US state, which is forced to collect money everywhere for financing the war machinery. But unlike 1991, when the costs of the war (some $60 billion) were financed collectively by the 'Coalition', the US is now forced to finance most of the cost of the war itself. At the recent Madrid 'donor conference', where the US had hoped to collect some $36 billion for the next four years, they received a blank refusal from the other states. The US only collected $13 billion, which was given not as grants but as credits. In addition, most of the money designated for reconstruction has been spent on financing the USA's military presence: it was not spent on the actual reconstruction. In 2003, out of the total special US budget funds for Iraq of $80 billion, only $20 billion was actually spent on reconstruction programmes. The largest part was swallowed by the costs of the occupation. The relationship between the military and 'civilian' expenditure is approximately 3:1.

In decadent capitalism wars do not serve to boost the economy. It is not the economy that chooses the option of war, but it is militarism that has imposed its laws more and more on the economy. (See Chapter 7 of our pamphlet The Decadence of Capitalism).

Wars for oil

Another major element of explanation put forward by many groups was that it was a 'war for oil'.

Attac and other leftist groups claim that Bush is only a puppet of the oil industry. For them it was above all Vice-President Dick Cheney - as the man of the oil and construction industry - who was the driving force in the war against Iraq, who had imposed the idea of controlling the oil resources in the region onto the US state. Even if the groups of the internationalist camp do not repeat this crude argument, some place their whole emphasis on the importance of oil resources and the control of oil prices. Thus a representative of the Berlin group Aufbrechen explained months before the war at a discussion in Berlin: "Antagonistic interests are clashing with each other. The question is who controls the oil tap? Oil is not only the last raw material that cannot be replaced by synthetics, but because of its central role in the production of energy it has become the 'lubricant' for the capitalist economy. This is why a low crude oil price corresponds best to the conditions of accumulation of capital, in order to achieve high profits and to keep the costs of reproduction of the proletariat in the industrial countries low�For Washington, the long-term and direct control of the second biggest oil reserves of the world seems more important than a low oil price in the short-term [with a special reference to the instability and the significance of Saudi-Arabia]. In this context, the oil reserves of Iraq have moved into the focus of the US administration, which is known as a lobby of the US oil industry" (Leaflet of invitation to a public debate by Aufbrechen, Gruppe Internationale Sozialisten, November 2002).

Can the war be explained by 'local' factors (availability of raw materials) and the respective role and importance of these raw materials in the economy? What link is there between the availability of raw materials and the development of militarism?

The booty the US has received so far from the oil wells is fairly 'modest' to say the least. One year after the war, oil production has not really got off the ground. In January 2004, Iraqi oil production reached 2.2 million barrels, out of which 1.8 million are exported. Before the war production capacity was around 3.5 million barrels. So far, the hope that Iraqi oil resources might enrich the oil companies has not materialised: it was hoped that Iraqi oil revenues might pour some $25-$50 billion into the pockets of the oil companies. In order to bring in this amount of money, Iraqi oil production would have to be increased to 7 million barrels a day. But oil pipelines are being destroyed repeatedly through sabotage. Years will go by before the Iraqi oil infrastructure is sufficiently modernised. Moreover it's not at all clear what proportion of the oil profits from Iraq will indeed flow into the pockets of US companies. One year after the Iraq war the oil price was at around the same level as before the war. The Iraqi oil revenues will neither be sufficient to boost the economy of the country nor will they be sufficient to cover the war funds of the USA.

Furthermore, the situation today is not comparable to the situation after the Second World War, when in the midst of a ruined Europe, with the biggest destruction above all in Germany, the Marshall Plan served as a lever to initiate a 20 year long reconstruction period. In addition, the USA has so much debt today that it has to go and beg for money: without the billions that other countries invest in the USA, the US economy could not survive. Also it is now obvious that US troops - and other troops who are part of the US-led alliance, as well as Iraqi police and other state institutions - have become the preferred targets for terrorist attacks. This is not a favourable environment for US business activities or foreign investment.

If the US has not shied away from the gigantic costs involved, even if no (short-term) economic benefit can be drawn from this, then why did they unleash the war? What key role does the Middle East play?

The geo-strategic interests of the USA

After September 11th the USA placed its global strategy at a higher level: "The 'war against terrorism' was immediately announced as a permanent and planet-wide military offensive. Faced with an increasing challenge from its principal imperialist rivals...the USA opted for a policy of much more massive and direct military intervention, with the strategic goal of the encirclement of Europe and Russia by gaining control of Central Asia and the Middle East" (International Review 113 'Resolution on the international situation', April 2003, point 6).

Against this background of the global geo-strategic approach of the US bourgeoisie, where it is the only superpower left since the collapse of the Russian bloc, where it has to confront any new possible challenge to its hegemony with the greatest determination, where it must not stop short of using any means, and where the US aims to encircle Europe and Russia in the long-term, it is indispensable to have an additional tool for blackmailing its rivals other than its direct military domination. For the US it is of decisive importance for it to be able to exploit Japanese and European dependency on oil supplies from the Middle East. If they can close the oil tap whenever they like, then on this level the US has scored an important point, because while the US are occupying Iraq the Europeans cannot get access to the Iraqi oil without the permission of the US. Consequently, most of the European states and Russia will have no option but to try to push the US out of Iraq.

But even this strategically important point that the US has scored, which gives it a considerable advantage, has turned out to be a double-edged sword. US intervention has unleashed a spiral of terror and chaos in the region. This can only contribute to the undermining of US influence in the Middle East and thus offer America's rivals more room for manoeuvre.

The explanation that the Iraq conflict was a 'war for oil' cannot offer a sufficient explanation if the US finds itself in an increasingly worsening quagmire. We can see that wars have increasingly detached themselves from a simple cost-benefit calculation and the needs of the military have become prevalent.

War has become the mode of survival of the decadent capitalist system: "Imperialist policy is not the policy of one or of some states, it is the product of a certain level of development in the world development of capital, a profoundly international phenomena, an indivisible totality, which can only be understood in its global context and that no state can escape from." (Rosa Luxemburg, Junius Pamphlet)

For reasons of space we cannot deal with other types of explanation of the war. However, those groups that a year ago said that Europe was acting as a single bloc against the USA should verify their analyses in the light of reality: developments have since confirmed that Europe is not a unit. And those who saw behind the Iraq war the defence of the predominant position of the US currency - and thought that the war was unleashed because the USA wanted the oil-trade to continue to be paid in US dollars - also have to put their analysis into question. The reasons why the value of the dollar has continued to fall need answering, and why the euro for some time now has reached record heights against the dollar. Even if the exchange rates are determined by different factors, we can still see - one year after the war - that the US dollar has not been able to strengthen its position.

Instead of boosting the economy, instead of pouring gigantic sums into the pockets of the oil-companies, the spiral of war has not only worsened in Iraq but in the whole Middle East. To reduce this worsening of barbarism to some simple economic calculation would be to underestimate the impasse of the capitalist system. Therefore, the Iraq war should force us to draw a more profound balance sheet on the prospects of the capitalist system as a whole.

Da, 15/3/04.

On May 1 2003 George Bush said that the war in Iraq was over and won. Since then the likes of Rumsfeld have had to acknowledge a "war that is complicated and difficult". The occupation forces led by the US now talk about "uprisings" across the country. With the Iraqi population caught in the chaos and the crossfire, with many deceived into joining pro- or anti-US militias, this is just what the capitalist left has been hoping for. Against the repression and torture of the occupation they celebrate the car bombs, kidnappings and land mines of the 'resistance'.

Last November Tariq Ali speculated whether guerrilla warfare would turn into "an Iraqi National Liberation Front". According to his leftist co-thinkers that wish has come true. The Weekly Worker (15/4/4) has announced that "the situation has been transformed. The entry of previously uncommitted forces - Shia Islamist forces with real mass support and roots - into open armed opposition has produced a real confrontation of the masses themselves with the coalition. � The real war of national liberation has begun". The World Socialist Web Site cheers a "broad and popular movement" and a "heroic and justified nationwide uprising against colonial repression". And although WW (22/4/4) is concerned about "the influence of clerical and reactionary elements" and WSWS warns of attempts to divide the "resistance", there is no mistaking their enthusiasm for "a movement of Iraq's urban poor and most oppressed" (WSWS) dying in the cause of Iraqi nationalism.

Poor and oppressed, the victims in capitalist war

In a previous article (WR 270) we showed that it was entirely appropriate that the leftists should compare the Iraqi 'resistance' to the underground guerrilla forces active in France during the Second World War. The French resistance was a weapon of Allied imperialism that, regardless of allegiance to De Gaulle or Stalin, was against the working class defending its class interests in time of war. Yet at WSWS (7/4/4) you can read that "The Iraqi resistance against US occupation is just as legitimate as the struggles waged by the French resistance against German occupation in the 1940s and the liberation struggles that swept the colonial countries in the 1960s and 1970s."

In this respect the leftists have been consistent. They wanted workers to abandon any concern for their own class interests and enrol for the imperialist Allies who fought under the 'anti-fascist' banner. During the Cold War, when 'national liberation struggles' were part of the conflict between the Russian and American imperialist blocs, the leftists continued to defend the national interests of the bourgeoisie against the class interests of the proletariat. And now the leftists are the foremost advocates of an Iraqi capitalism without the presence of foreign troops. They complain that the 'resistance' has been slandered as former supporters of Saddam, religious fanatics or foreign terrorists. While some of these descriptions are applicable, the fundamental point for the working class to remember is that it is being asked to die in a war between different capitalist factions - whether under the flag of 'freedom', democracy and the 'war on terror', or behind opposing forces proclaiming their loyalty to Islam, 'socialism' or Iraqi integrity.

The language of the 'resistance' and its supporters also echoes that of 1939-45. Many forces are dismissed as pro-US 'puppets' and 'collaborators'. Yet the Shia forces of Moqtada al-Sadr, the Jaish al-Mahdi militia that has so inspired the leftists, have functioned just like the supposed 'traitors'. "An apparent deal is being struck under which many of the gunmen would be absorbed into a legal Iraqi force which will take over security of the two holy cities and allow the US military to withdraw. A similar agreement was reached last month to end the fighting in the Sunni city of Falluja" (Guardian 13/5/4). For real working class internationalism against its leftist distortions

To make sure there can be no misunderstanding of their positions, a number of leftist groups have made it clear that they oppose any hesitations in supporting the 'resistance'. In practice this tends to mean that they don't share the current views of the Worker Communist Party of Iraq on the current conflict, even though they have enormous respect for the WCPI's work in the unions etc.

The WCPI's position is superficially 'radical'. They say they don't support "nationalism and defending the lands and waters of the homeland". They say "Occupation" and "Resistance" are "two poles within the same reactionary camp". Yet their analysis doesn't take them away from the logic of leftism. In a text first published in International Weekly (30/1/4) they say that the "situation in Iraq is an immense human catastrophe, bleak, chaotic with total social disintegration". This "political calamity is a direct result" of the attacks of the US coalition. They claim that there is no state in Iraq and that "The international bourgeoisie is incapable of establishing civil order in Iraq". This means that "The question of power can only be resolved by expelling the US forces from Iraq". They see the fundamental problem facing Iraq as "the filling of the power vacuum and bringing an end to the chaos and disarray." The WCPI does not insist on workers defending their class interests but demands "the establishment of a secular, non-religious, and non-ethnic state in Iraq". Their solution to the problems facing the country is "Immediate withdrawal of the US and British forces and handing over the administration, as well as peace-keeping in Iraq, to the UN forces for a provisional period and providing freedom and equal material resources to all the political organisations to inform the masses about their alternatives and programmes." This is a familiar call on the UN and democracy, and yet the WCPI claims that no one has ever had to face such a situation before.

A war between different capitalist factions is not a new situation. Revolutionaries defend an internationalist position, which means advocating the independent struggle of the working class against the bourgeoisie that wants to mobilise workers for all its conflicts. The WCPI, through its advocacy of UN intervention and its participation in the Union of the Unemployed in Iraq, has already shown it is not shy of filling the "power vacuum" in its co-operation with the occupation in distributing food and other aid. Their rhetoric sounds more 'radical', but fundamentally, in time of war, they stand for bourgeois order, not the struggle of the working class.

Another group that uses 'revolutionary' language is the Internationalist Communist Group. Founded by ex-militants of the ICC more than 20 years ago, this parasitic group has subsequently given its support to leftist guerrilla actions in Latin America, and tried to portray desperate acts of social disorder as proletarian struggle. In their French publication (Communisme no 55) they have plumbed new depths. They begin by stating that "the proletariat in Iraq has given an example to its brothers throughout the whole world in refusing to fight for its oppressors", that workers have "refused to die for interests that were not their own". And it's certainly true that Iraqi workers showed little enthusiasm for dying on behalf of Saddam's army when the US Coalition first invaded. But it is criminally false to identify this response with the subsequent active mobilisation of Iraqi proletarians behind the 'resistance' with its reactionary capitalist agenda. This is exactly what the GCI does. They conflate the desertions and demonstrations of the unemployed that have undoubtedly taken place with the bombings, acts of sabotage and armed expressions of the military conflict, and claim that in all this "you can see the contours of the proletariat which is trying to struggle, organising itself against all fractions" while minimising the influence of the "Islamists or pan-Arab nationalists" on this alleged proletarian movement.

The main reality of the conflict in Iraq is that, with some small exceptions, workers are not fighting for their own interests and are caught up in a military campaign that flies the flags of Islam and Iraqi nationalism. Leftism tries to obscure the struggle between classes and advocates that workers die in the conflicts of their class enemies.

Car, 26/5/04.

America and Britain, we are told, went to war against Saddam Hussein's Iraq in order to defend civilisation and democracy from terrorism and rogue states. The torture and humiliation inflicted on Iraqi prisoners reveals the true nature of democratic civilisation.

The Bush administration claims that the hideous revelations from Abu-Ghraib are exceptions to the democratic rule. The truth is that there is a straight line from the measures routinely used at Guantanamo to the 'abuses' in Saddam's former torture-chamber, and that between prison life in Guantanamo and life in 'ordinary' American jails there is only a difference in degree. The truth is that the rank and file soldiers leering in the photographs from Abu-Ghraib were only carrying out 'softening up' policies decided at the very highest level of the American state.

But torture isn't unique to American democracy

The British, who claim to go 'softly softly' compared to the Americans, have used equally brutal methods in Iraq (see the article on page 2) and this is nothing new: British occupying forces have perfected numerous varieties of torture, from the subtle to the savage, in Aden, Kenya, Northern Ireland�

And what of the democratic states who have been openly critical of the Iraq war? France has been the most vociferous, but French imperialism has a very well-documented history of torture from Indo-China to Algeria. Belgium's record in the Congo is no less bloody.

Abu-Ghraib merely symbolises the fact that there is nothing to chose between 'democracy' and 'dictatorship', between one set of capitalist jailers and another.

Workers everywhere should keep this in mind whenever we are asked to stand up for democracy - and we are certainly being asked to do this more and more. This month we are being told that we must do our democratic duty and turn out to vote in European or regional elections; if we don't, then we will open the door to 'undemocratic' parties like the BNP.

We're also being encouraged to celebrate the slaughter on the Normandy beaches in 1944, because this, at least, was a 'Good War', a war to defend democracy against the unspeakable evil of Nazism.

In short, we have to defend democracy because it is supposed to protect us from something much worse. But as long as it allows itself to be caught up in this false alternative, the working class will never get to the root of the problem - a world system in profound decay, a moribund society which oozes war, torture and repression from every pore. As long as we are cowed into supporting the bourgeoisie's 'democratic' factions against its more openly 'dictatorial' representatives, we will never develop our identity and our independence as a class, we will never be able to offer a real alternative to this miserable game of 'choose the lesser evil'.

Capitalism in its death-agony threatens to turn the entire planet into a torture chamber. Against this threat the struggle of the working class raises the perspective of the communist revolution - not to make the global prison more democratic, but to demolish it altogether.

WR, 29/5/04.

The question of war is not a recent discovery for the workers' movement. Already, towards the end of the 19th century, faced with sharpening competition between the great nations of Europe, revolutionaries posed the question of the perspective of war. Faced with the evolution of a capitalist system that was more and more a prisoner of its insurmountable contradictions, the workers' movement, with Engels at its head, clearly announced that the perspective would henceforth be "socialism or barbarism". During the Paris Socialist Congress at the beginning of the 20th century, Rosa Luxemburg made an intervention of great clear-sightedness in which she foresaw the possibility that the first great manifestation of the weakness of capitalism wouldn't be the sharpening of the economic crisis, but first of all the explosion of imperialist war. And that's what happened.

The causes of war

The bourgeoisie is not short of explanations for the wars that ravage the planet today. With a few nuances, one can quite easily make an exhaustive inventory of these explanations: oil, of course, and more broadly raw materials; but also religion, the defence of democracy, the need to subdue dangerous madmen, to impose respect for international law, the rights of man, the pursuit of a humanitarian aim, or quite simply, after everything else, human nature. As Victor Hugo says: "For six thousand years, war has pleased quarrelsome people. And God wastes his time making the stars and flowers".

Poetry has its charms, but there is even less chance of it transforming the world than philosophy. Is war inherent to human nature? Does man really like to fight so much? Is humanity condemned to engender evil minds, which always end up setting off explosions, and which can only be restrained by yet more weapons? As marxists, we firmly reject these explanations.

It is true to say that war is a part of the history of civilisations, but that's not a reason for concluding that war is an eternal phenomenon. War is part of the history of civilisations because, since it came out of primitive communism, humanity has only known societies divided into classes, that's to say societies of shortages and competition, including of course, capitalism.

Capitalism has known wars since its birth: for German unification in 1866, the Franco-German war of 1871, the American Civil War of 1861-65 that unified the country, and also the colonial wars.

But this situation took a qualitative turn in the 20th century. With the 20th century came two world wars that had their theatre at the very heart of the great capitalist nations. It saw millions of proletarians in uniform kill each other and above all it saw destruction the like of which had never been seen in the whole history of humanity: the deaths of millions of civilians under conventional or nuclear bombardments, deportations and the genocide of populations, destruction of entire areas of economic infrastructure. Since the Second World War, war on the planet has not stopped for one single second. It has hit every continent, sowing death and destruction. It is thus necessary to state that war threatens humanity more and more. If war in the 20th century takes on such breadth, it is because capitalism has come to the final stage in its evolution. Wars of the preceding century were products of a capitalism that was in full expansion. It allowed capitalism to develop in the framework of more solid national structures, as with the civil war in the United States, or it permitted the conquest of new markets, as in the case of colonial wars.

The First World War marked a break with the wars of the preceding century. Henceforth, the objective was no longer to allow capitalism to pursue its development but to steal markets from competitor nations, to weaken them and grab strategic positions. This confirmed the entry of capitalism into its period of decadence. Capitalism could no longer find new markets to conquer and at the same time was capable of producing much more than the existing solvent markets were capable of absorbing. Thus began a vast cycle of self-destruction.

Capitalist decadence is shown by a desperate flight into war. As Hitler said "Export or die"! Gigantic resources became necessary for these wars. With the decadence of capitalism all economic potential tends towards war and production for war. All technical progress, all scientific research, every discovery is dominated by the aims of war.

There is thus a profound difference between the wars in the period of ascendancy and those of the period of decadence. A difference which is not only quantitative but also qualitative. The concept of decadence is essential if we want to understand the nature of war in capitalism. In particular, we have to understand that wars in the period of decadence are fundamentally irrational from capitalism's own point of view.

The irrationality of war

When we talk of irrationality, we are not posing the question from a moralistic point of view, but rather as marxists, from a materialist and objective point of view. In the period of the decadence of capitalism, marxists characterise all wars as imperialist wars. All countries are imperialist, from the biggest to the smallest; all dream of conquering or destroying their neighbour, or of having a particular influence in a region, on a continent or over the whole world.

In the period of decadence the economic crisis is permanent and irreversible. The bourgeoisie is perfectly incapable of resolving this crisis, which doesn't depend on a good or bad management but is the expression of the internal contradictions of the mode of production itself.

At the time of the First World War, the bourgeoisie had the hope that the camp which came out victorious from the war would be able to impose on the vanquished a new carve-up of the world, and thus recoup the lost markets. But this war had already demonstrated the futility, even for the victors, of any such economic hopes. Every nation (with the exception of the United States for particular reasons) came out of it economically weakened, including the camp of the victors. This was glaring in the case of Britain, which had begun its fall as a great power. The development of war has shown itself since for what it is: an ineluctable product of the historic crisis of capitalism, pushing each nation, beginning with the biggest, to confront their competitors in a desperate fight for survival. Economic logic more and more gives way to the simple search for strategic positions in order to make war. The logic is war for war. One of the most striking examples of this madness is illustrated by the USSR, which was exhausted by the arms race with the USA to the point that its economy collapsed like a house of cards at the end of the 1980s. Once again, it is only by understanding the evolution of capitalism and its entry into decadence that we can comprehend the irrational nature of war today. And it's no surprise that some internationalist groups, though quite capable of denouncing war from a proletarian point of view, are at the same time incapable of seeing the irrationality of war. In fact these groups, in particular the International Bureau for the Revolutionary Party and the different Bordigist groups either totally reject the concept of decadence (the Bordigists) or more and more call it into question (the IBRP). And this means that while these comrades clearly manage to stand up for internationalism, they can't provide a serious explanation for war, since they don't understand the difference that exists between the wars of decadence and those of ascendancy. They are reduced to seeing virtually every war as a 'war for oil'. The reality is much more than that. In the case of Iraq, for example, who today can support the idea that American intervention was mainly motivated by the need to control the production of oil in order to enrich the large American companies? The economic costs of the war far outweigh the profits of the oil companies. For US imperialism, control of Middle Eastern oil is far more a military goal than an economic one (see article on p6).

The same is true for ex-Yugoslavia, for Afghanistan, etc. In these places chaos and insecurity continue to reign - the very worst thing as far as normal capitalist business is concerned. In unleashing war, capitalism in decline destroys the very ground beneath its feet. This mad spiral is the product of the bankruptcy of the system and it means that history cannot move on without the destruction of this system.

What can the working class do?

On the road of its historic struggle, the working class comes up against imperialist war and is led to question it and rise up against it. Since its birth, the working class has distinguished itself from other classes by its internationalism. The proletariat has no country. Internationalism is a fundamental frontier between the classes.

When we say that all countries are imperialist, we mean that proletarians have nothing to gain and everything to lose by defending 'their' country under the pretext that they would be worse off under the domination of another. Proletarian internationalism is founded on the recognition that, for the working class, the enemy is the bourgeoisie, of its 'own' country or any other country.

What can the working class do today in order to defend internationalism? Today the bourgeoisie no longer mobilises massive numbers of troops from the ranks of the working class: war has become professional, even if the pressure of unemployment makes putting on a uniform a get-out for desperate workers. Today, war is declared under the most cunning reasons: fighting terrorism, unseating 'evil dictators', saving the lives of the hungry. But in the final analysis capitalist war always defends the interests of the dominant class. Terrorism remains a weapon of the capitalist state; even when the ruling classes pretend to fight it here, they use it elsewhere. 'Evil dictators' are used in the same way: damned here, anointed and protected elsewhere. Meanwhile starving populations continue to die of hunger, while more and more economic resources are poured into the coffers of war.

All nations are imperialist; all wars must be denounced. But denunciation is not sufficient; it is necessary to understand the real roots of war. The bourgeoisie knows very well how to 'denounce' wars. It uses a very dangerous weapon for this job: pacifism. Pacifism is not only the utopia of a capitalist world without war; it is also the means to enrol workers into a false anti-war stance, which really means supporting one bourgeois gang against another. In the final analysis, pacifism is the handmaiden of nationalism, the worst poison for the proletariat. It's not by chance that pacifism and 'alternative worldism' specialise in anti-American chauvinism, and that over the war in Iraq German and French imperialism have been able to exploit this ideology for their own sordid ends

The working class must thus denounce not this or that war, but imperialist war as such, the unavoidable product of a dying social order. Whatever specific forms these wars take today, the proletariat, particularly in the central countries, must maintain and develop its own class struggle against the growing attacks on its very conditions of life. This is the only basis for developing a more profound political consciousness of the necessity to overthrow the capitalist system on a world scale.

G, 29/6/04.