Revolutionary defeatism and the Falklands war

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this knowledze not to shoot their brothers. PHOTO: JOHN HARRIS FALKLAND by Martin ALL THE talk in the press and IV - even when the war is criticised - is of "our" fleet and "our" troops. Yet that little word "our" begs all the questions that socialists should be asking about the war.

There was a time when "patriot" meant "radical" and the creation of unified nation-states by the bourgeoisie was a tremendous historic step forward from the rule of feudal kings and princes. Those times have long since passed.

Capitalism has developed the working class as an international class, subject to the same exploitation (often by the same exploiters) world-wide. It has created a closely interlinked world economy, in which established national boundaries, rivalries, and protectionisms are a reactionary factor.

The working class can act as a progressive class only by setting itself the objective of the international reorganisation of society on the basis of planned production for need.

Thus the workers of Britain, • of Argentina, and of every other country have a thousand times more in common with each other than any of them have with their "own" capitalist ruling classes.

The working class needs to see itself, not as part of a 'national unity" under the ruling class, but as a separate "nation" - which takes an attitude to the wars of its "own" ruling class just as independent and suspicious as to those of other ruling classes.

British workers should look on the British ruling class's war in the South Atlantic with the same critical eye as we should look on a similar war waged ho tha ITS or hv Chile. or THE Militant newspaper has misused the Marxist arguments against pacifism in order to justify a very equivocal position on the South Atlantic war.

Militant does not actually "support the war" as Socialist Challenge (May 13) has alleged. But it certainly does not campaign vigorously against it.

It is as much against Thatcher's war as Thatcher's peace - but, it seems, no more so. John Pickard writes: "Workers can give no support whatsoever to Thatcher's government in war any more than in peacetime" (May 14).

Though saying that "workers will win nothing"

from the war headline, April 16), Militant opposes the call to "withdraw the fleet"

"Such a demand", writes Ted Grant (May 21), "is completely unrealistic and futile. It is only necessary to ask the question, 'How can the fleet be brought back?

By asking Thatcher'.

"Only a general strike...

could stop Thatcher by bringing her government , down" 1 • 1. ฿ Tenin: Tearn the military art. of their own countries'. by any other power.

The fundamental policy of the British ruling class, now as for decades past, is to establish itself as an exploiter and oppressor world-wide.

The Tories are seeking to entrench their prestige and to boost their arms drive. Britain, despite its declining strength over recent decades, is still economically a major imperialist power, drawing big profits from investments overseas, and playing a central (and profitable) role in international finance.

The Tories aim to back up that economic role with a demonstration that Britain is still a big military power.

Britain has no rights in the South Atlantic - and no-one can now believe it is there inst to help the FalkGrant continues: "The lefts, by putting forward a negative pacifist position, cannot gain the support of the mass of the working class ... Once hostilities take on a more intense character there will be a feeling among a big majority of the Labour Party and trade unions that there is no other course but to support the war, out of solidarity with the British workers in uniform, not for chauvinist reasons".

The answer therefore is to call for a general election and a Labour government pledged to socialist policies, which will solve the Falklands problem by a class appeal» to the Argentine workers.

The whole argument, culminating in a description of the "undreamed-of prosperity" to be achieved by a socialist federation of Argentina, Britain and the Falklands, is an elaborate evasion - an exercise in the method of avoiding today's sharp struggles by pointing to tomorrow's glittering prospects.

• To understand it wę need to, look at the classic Marvist The proletarians need land Islanders.

So we must oppose Britain's war - though that does not necessarily mean support for Argentina's war.

In 1915 Lenin explained, 'Only a bourgeois who believes that a war started by the governments must necessarily end as a war between governments and regard as 'ridiculous' and wants it to end as such. can TY MALAUN 'absurd' the idea that the Socialists of all the belligerent countries should wish for the defeat of all 'their" governments and express this wish"

Militant pursuit of the class struggle despite the war and against the war was in fact a policy for the defeat of all the governments.

Karl Liebknecht summed it up with the slogan: arguments it (mis)uses.

In the First World War, Marxists rejected calls for ceasefires, withdrawals, of disarmament because these would just be empty shouting into the holocaust, evasions from the task of "turning the imperialist war into a civil war"

In the Second World War Trotskyists in countries like the US and Britain developed an adaptation of the slogan "turn the imperialist war into a civil war"

They saw the war as fundamentally one between imperialist robber powerrid. re-divide However, they had to relate to the concerns of workers who wanted to fight Hitlerism. So they put forward the slogan: "Only a workers' government can fight Hitlerism" • developing it to demand military training election ode ricers, contes, control in war industries, eTC. "Only a workers' government can fight Galtierism"?

That is what Militant's line would be, rendered rational.

But it is ridiculous. The bold Leninist line, pf " civil 'The main enemy is at home". For every working class, the main enemy is its own ruling class.

Lenin was writing about the First World War, which he viewed as a war between the imperialist great powers, each trying to grab as many colonies or semi-colonies as possible.

But he also outlined the general principies wnicn, romenaal -hinh Ře argued, should govern the attitude of socialists towards wars.

'Socialists have always condemned war between nations as barbarous and brutal" . But that does not exhaust the question. Every war must be assessed concretely.

'War is the continuation of politics by other means." Therefore wars must be assessed on the basis of the politics they war" has come down to ... a general election! The tactical shifts forced on the British and US Trotskyists in 193945 are welcomed by Militant, which almost looks forward to mass support for the war.

Galtieri's petty conquest is compared to Hitler's rampage across Europe, Thatcher's arrogant deployment of the fleet with what British workers saw as desperate self-defence.

The Trotskyists' line in World War 2 was an international line. Yet Militant's line now is a purely national one. It tells the Argentine workers: overthrow the junta - and wait for a general election in Britain, after which Militant may argue for a Labour government to withdraw the fleet standing off your shores.

In truth, the "realism"

the scholastic arguments, the schoolmasterly contempt for "the lefts" , the generalities about socialism being the only answer 1o war serve only one purpose - to evade a struggle against this war, now. the workers of other countries. 4o=a on tem.

"continue" - and on the basis of the fundamental line of those politics, not of individual atrocities and injustices which a bourgeoisie might cite to prove that its war was a just war.

'In China, Persia, India and other dependent countries" , Lenin wrote, "we have seen during the past decades a policy of La tana and handunno of millions of people to national life, of liberating them from the oppression of the reactionary 'great' powers. A war on such a historical ground can even today be a bourgeoisprogressive, nationalliberation war"

But the world war of the great powers continued a decades-old "policy of plundering colonies, of oppressing other nations, of suppressing the working hut to fight the hourgeoisie class movement"

We should apply the same method to the present war.

Even though Britain is not out to conquer Argentina, on its side the war continues a policy of an arms build-up, of trying to reassert Britain as an imperialist big power, and of attacking the working class.

Reactionary

Argentina is not an imperialist big power like Britain, but on its side too the war continues reactionary policies both nationally and internationally.

Basing itself on the most developed economy of the sub-continent, the Galtieri junta has built itself up as a pillar of capitalist and imperialist control - sponsoring the Torrelio dictatorship in Bolivia, giving material support to the military in El Salvador. It has planned for a 'South Atlantic Treaty Organisation' including itself, South Africa, and the US, with the Falklands as a military base.

Nationalism

The invasion was intended to strengthen the hand of the junta in such plans and to use nationalism to divert the growing workers' struggles in Argentina. Evidently Galtieri calculated on little response from the British ruling class; but the ferocity of Thatcher's reactionary war, and the consequent rupture between Galtieri and the US, cannot convert the junta's war to defend its invasion into a 'bourgeois-progressive, national-liberation war"

Nor can historic claims dating from 1833 make the junta's trampling on the islanders' rights progressive.

Vigour

Thus the politics, and therefore the war, on both sides are reactionary. The politics of the working class must be opposed to the war on both sides. On both sides socialists should pursue the class struggle with all their vigour, not fearing to undermine the national war effort.

This class war policy of defeat on both sides is not the same as the policy of opposing the war on both sides simply in the name of peace.

Lenin explained: "Marxism is not pacifism. It is necessary, of course, to fight for the speediest termination of the war. But only if a revolutionary struggle is called for does the demand for "peace' acquire proletarian meaning. Without a series of revolutions, so-called democratic peace is a philistine utopia"

Simply to appeal to the warring governments lor to the governments assembled in the UN) for peace, is to confine ourselves to plaintive pleas until they exhaust themselves and present us with their peace - shaped by their reactionary politics, and containing the basis tor new wars.

An independent working-class approach, unlike the pacifist one, thinks matters continuation of Thatcher's politics by other means. Our fight against this war is the continuation of our fight against Thatcher's politics.

Solidarity

The line of defeat for both Thatcher and Galtieri in this war is a continuation of the international working class policy of solidarity with the workers' fight against the junta.

We want the defeat of our ruling class and we want the defeat of their war. Force the withdrawal of the fleet! Black military supplies! Bring down the Tories! Those should be our slogans against the war.

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Socialist Organiser, Thursday 27 May, 1982 Page 11

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FALKLA MADNESS

MARI SOLIS NOTHING AUNESS

through to their conclu- sions. This war is the