International Communist Current
Public forum
World War Two: ‘Good war’ or imperialist massacre?
Saturday 14 November
2pm
Conway Hall
Red Lion Square
London WC1
Seventy years after the Nazi invasion of Poland and Britain’s declaration of war on Germany, the idea that the Second World War was a ‘Good War’ remains a central foundation-stone of modern ‘democratic’ civilisation.
Many of those who denounce the horror of the trenches in World War One and describe them as expressions of an ‘imperialist war’ change their tune when it comes to the Second World War. This, they say, was a war that had to be fought and had to be won, otherwise we would be groaning under the heel of Nazism to this day. In the same way, vociferous opponents of the current military adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan grew indignant when Tony Blair compared himself to Churchill because he was opposing the Hitler of the Middle East, Saddam Hussein. Blair, the ‘anti-war’ camp argue, is a war criminal; Churchill was a war hero leading the fight against the real Hitler, who was a genuine threat to our democratic way of life.
It’s not just the more open defenders of democratic capitalism who come up with these arguments. From the left we get the same arguments, but with a ‘marxist’ coating: the war was only partly imperialist because the USSR was an anti-imperialist force and had to be defended. Or else bourgeois democracy is historically progressive in relation to fascism, and had to be defended. There are even anarchists who justify their political support for the nationalist Resistance fronts with arguments like ‘they were fighting for survival’ or that the ‘maquis’ somehow represent a proletarian form of anti-fascism.
In this forum we will be challenging all these arguments and arguing that the Second World War can only be understood as an imperialist massacre on both sides. It was in perfect continuity with the previous world butchery and indeed plunged humanity into even greater horrors. And faced with this renewed slide into barbarism, the position of communists and internationalists, of those who see history from the standpoint of the working class, could be no different than the position adopted by the Bolsheviks, Spartacists and other revolutionaries during World War One: no truce in the class struggle in either camp; turn the imperialist war into a civil war.
In developing this argument we are not inventing anything new but reaffirming the views of the revolutionaries who did maintain an internationalist position during the dark days of the Second World War: the various fractions of the communist left, a handful of internationalist anarchists and former Trotskyists who broke from the patriotism of the so-called Fourth International.
This is a discussion which is not just of historical interest. Since capitalism has not changed its imperialist nature, we are still faced with the fact that this system can only respond to its insoluble contradictions by force-marching us off to war, even if the forms of today’s wars and the ideologies that justify them are different from those of sixty or seventy years ago. To oppose today’s imperialist wars, it is absolutely essential to understand the internationalist principles and practices which allowed revolutionaries of the past to remain loyal to their cause in the face of physical and ideological terror.
Whether or not you agree with our analysis of imperialism and of the Second World War, we urge all those who are interested in the meaning of internationalism today to come along to this meeting and debate the issues.
Public forum
World War Two: ‘Good war’ or imperialist massacre?
Saturday 14 November
2pm
Conway Hall
Red Lion Square
London WC1
Seventy years after the Nazi invasion of Poland and Britain’s declaration of war on Germany, the idea that the Second World War was a ‘Good War’ remains a central foundation-stone of modern ‘democratic’ civilisation.
Many of those who denounce the horror of the trenches in World War One and describe them as expressions of an ‘imperialist war’ change their tune when it comes to the Second World War. This, they say, was a war that had to be fought and had to be won, otherwise we would be groaning under the heel of Nazism to this day. In the same way, vociferous opponents of the current military adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan grew indignant when Tony Blair compared himself to Churchill because he was opposing the Hitler of the Middle East, Saddam Hussein. Blair, the ‘anti-war’ camp argue, is a war criminal; Churchill was a war hero leading the fight against the real Hitler, who was a genuine threat to our democratic way of life.
It’s not just the more open defenders of democratic capitalism who come up with these arguments. From the left we get the same arguments, but with a ‘marxist’ coating: the war was only partly imperialist because the USSR was an anti-imperialist force and had to be defended. Or else bourgeois democracy is historically progressive in relation to fascism, and had to be defended. There are even anarchists who justify their political support for the nationalist Resistance fronts with arguments like ‘they were fighting for survival’ or that the ‘maquis’ somehow represent a proletarian form of anti-fascism.
In this forum we will be challenging all these arguments and arguing that the Second World War can only be understood as an imperialist massacre on both sides. It was in perfect continuity with the previous world butchery and indeed plunged humanity into even greater horrors. And faced with this renewed slide into barbarism, the position of communists and internationalists, of those who see history from the standpoint of the working class, could be no different than the position adopted by the Bolsheviks, Spartacists and other revolutionaries during World War One: no truce in the class struggle in either camp; turn the imperialist war into a civil war.
In developing this argument we are not inventing anything new but reaffirming the views of the revolutionaries who did maintain an internationalist position during the dark days of the Second World War: the various fractions of the communist left, a handful of internationalist anarchists and former Trotskyists who broke from the patriotism of the so-called Fourth International.
This is a discussion which is not just of historical interest. Since capitalism has not changed its imperialist nature, we are still faced with the fact that this system can only respond to its insoluble contradictions by force-marching us off to war, even if the forms of today’s wars and the ideologies that justify them are different from those of sixty or seventy years ago. To oppose today’s imperialist wars, it is absolutely essential to understand the internationalist principles and practices which allowed revolutionaries of the past to remain loyal to their cause in the face of physical and ideological terror.
Whether or not you agree with our analysis of imperialism and of the Second World War, we urge all those who are interested in the meaning of internationalism today to come along to this meeting and debate the issues.
