While the global capitalist system is dragging the world into ever more war and misery, those who refuse to take sides in these wars and fight to end the system that causes them, are still few and far between. So it is a promising sign that this summer several extended meetings of internationalist revolutionaries from many different countries were organized in Europe, in early June, on the last day of the anti-war congress in Prague, we agreed on the need of a short statement on capitalism and war that expresses our common positions and can serve as a base for further networking and common action. This statement was drafted after the congress ended. It was discussed, amended and approved at the internationalist meeting in Arezzo where the hope was expressed that it will be further discussed by the participants of the Prague congress and those who will gather in Poznan later this month.

An Internationalist Statement on Capitalism and War

1. In our times, all wars are capitalist wars. While the specific circumstances in which they break out may be quite different, all are rooted in the capitalist system, which is based on competition and exploitation.

2. While imperialism has been a constant feature of capitalism since its beginning (1), the systemic crisis which capitalism faces today and the instability it engenders both push economic competition (2) to military conflict and create opportunities to do so. This crisis will only deepen, making it inevitable that the continuing existence of capitalism would imply the prospect of generalizing wars (3).

3. The working class, the vast majority of humankind, has nothing to win and everything to lose in war. It is always its main victim. National defense and national liberation means fighting and dying for the interests of one faction of the capitalist class against another. It means killing (and being killed by) other working class people for the power and profit of the class that exploits and oppresses us.

4. We reject both nationalism and democracy (4), which are the principal ideological tools by which the capitalist class creates the illusion that its interests and those of the working class within its borders are the same, and by which it mobilizes for war and justifies the militarization of society.

5. There are no separate solutions for the many existential threats to humankind. A peaceful capitalism, a green capitalism, a socially just capitalism are all just pipe dreams to hide the growing horror that is real. War, ethnic cleansing, genocide, ecocide, climate disasters, pandemics, poverty, insecurity, forced migration, homelessness, stress and mental breakdown will continue to worsen, together with the crisis of capitalism which causes them all. Therefore there is but one solution to all of them: closing the capitalist chapter of human history.

6. We are not pacifists. We do not call for negotiations or un interventions, parliamentary resolutions, disinvestments, etc. We do not appeal to the ruling class to act “reasonably”, because we understand that it can’t. Instead we count on autonomous, class based resistance to capitalism. The global working class is the only social force capable of ending capitalism and establishing a human community based on the fulfillment of needs instead of the compulsion of making profit.

7. But it has a long way to go. Its struggle cannot be merely economic, it has to be political as well and confront the state. It has to refuse to submit to capitalism’s war drive. We support proletarians on both sides of any war who refuse to fight, who desert (5), who fraternize instead of killing each other. We support sabotage of the war machine and collective resistance against conscription, mobilization and the militarization of society (6).

8. But the oxygen on which the war-machine depends is the exploitation of the proletariat, the extraction of surplus value. It would be paralyzed without it. So war can’t be stopped without ending exploitation. Furthermore, to make room for the war efforts, the ruling class has to attack the social wage, impose austerity. In fighting against it, workers fight against the war, consciously or not. The more they wage this fight autonomously, without any collaboration with the capitalist class and its state, the more it can blossom into a struggle against exploitation, a revolution which puts an end to capitalism, to its wars and its miserable ‘peace’.

The Internationalist Conference at Arezzo, June 2024

Editorial notes

With “Internationalist Statement” in the title is certainly meant “Proletarian Internationalist Statement”. The Statement lacks historic references to the proletarian internationalists during two World-Wars and the o so many wars since.

1. This very much depends on the definition of imperialism . Capitalist “expansion” is something else. Once the planet in its great outlines was divided by the main capitalist powers, “expansion” meant nothing more than the extention of the influence of one capitalist power at the expense of another, and then the term “imperialism” came into vogue in a new sense; first with the Franco-German war of 1870 (ending with the Paris’ Commune) following the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869, and more evident in 1914, when capitalism entered its final phase of decadence and decomposition, of imperialist wars and proletarian revolutions, “socialism or barbarism”.

2. It should say “finally” here as there is no direct causal relation between economic competition and war.

3. It doesn’t necessarily take two imperialist blocks and worldwar; the multiplication of local wars might have the same devastating effect.

4. See for more: Workers’ Councils against Bourgeois Democracy (Parliamentarism).

5. Internationalist workers in Germany in 1914 did not desert, but had themselves mobilized (conscriped) in order to obtain weapons to turn these against the bourgeoisie.

6. This mostly makes sense if it is part of, and calls for, a wider mobilization. ‘Symbolic actions’, which inevitably are repressed, tend to be counter-productive in the short run; although, in retrospective, they might later be considered ‘heroic’.

Compiled by Vico, 2 July 2024, latest additions 15 July 2024.

Also see: Proletarian Internationalism and: 1 May 2022, Russia, Ukraine, NATO: Pimps of Death.

A militarist view: The complicated truth about the famous ‘Christmas Truce’ of World War I  and: Imperial War Museums .