BY MARY-ALICE WATERS  
The current militarization campaign was initiated at the beginning of 1980. In his State of the Union message in January 1980, President James Carter announced the decision to reinstate draft registration. At the time, we pointed to this as "the first real war speech of the Carter administration."

The president's pronouncement, and the political offensive it was part of, signaled a shift in ruling-class policy. It marked the end of the retreat following the 1973 defeat in Vietnam and the fallout from the Watergate crisis at home.¹ It took the rulers the better part of a decade after they began withdrawing U.S. forces from Vietnam in 1971 to get themselves back into position for a militarization offensive.

Between 1973 and 1980 toilers around the world dealt body blows to imperialism on several battlefronts. These included the revolutionary overthrow of the landlord-based monarchy in Ethiopia in 1974; the defeat of Portuguese colonial rule in Africa in 1974–75; the defeat of the capitalist-landlord regime of South Vietnam and reunification of the country in 1975–76, and the fall of U.S.-backed forces in Kampuchea [Cambodia] and Laos; the defeat of the South African invasion of Angola by Cuban and Angolan troops in 1976, and the impulse that gave to a new upsurge of struggles throughout southern Africa, including against the apartheid regime in South Africa itself; the defeat in 1977 of the U.S.-backed Somalian invasion aimed at reversing the trajectory of the Ethiopian revolution; Zimbabwe's attainment of independence in 1980; the Iranian revolution of 1978–79; and the 1979 revolutions that led to the establishment of workers' and farmers' governments in Grenada and Nicaragua, along with the massive upsurge in El Salvador, advances in Guatemala, and the revolutionary boost these events gave to the fighting people of Cuba.

The 1980 Carter speech and draft registration announcement were timed to take advantage of two developments: in November 1979 U.S. embassy employees were taken hostage in Tehran; and in December 1979 Soviet military forces went into Afghanistan in the midst of an escalating civil war.² The U.S. ruling class seized on these events to beat the drums for their opening militarization moves with an outpouring of patriotic flag-waving and anticommunist propaganda.

The steps taken by the Carter administration were part of the systematic effort to counter the retreat imposed on Washington by its defeat in Vietnam and the erosion of public belief in the truthfulness of those who spoke for the institutions of capitalist government (broadly referred to as the Watergate crisis). These moves were aimed at reducing obstacles in the way of the U.S. rulers using their overwhelming military might to defend their class rule on a world scale. At the same time, Carter's actions were directed--as are all capitalist militarization measures--against working people, the oppressed nationalities, women pressing to extend their rights, and the youth of this country--the mass candidates for cannon fodder. The militarization campaign was an integral part of a stepped-up offensive to weaken our struggles against the employing class, erode our democratic rights, diminish our effective political space, and deepen divisions among us--the better to increase profits and strengthen the U.S. capitalists vis-a-vis their competitors in other countries.
 

The communist answer to imperialist militarism is straightforward and simple. It has been established and tested in struggle over decades. In fact, the communist movement of the twentieth century was born in struggle against those who led millions of workers into World War I by betraying the principle "Not one penny, not one person for the imperialist war machine!" That is our guidepost; without it we would be hopelessly lost.

But that slogan doesn't give us all the answers as we confront concrete propaganda and actions by the ruling class, as it drives forward its militarization and as it wages war. We are opposed to the imperialist draft. But if the working class is not strong enough to prevent a draft from being imposed, then we need a policy toward it. We need a policy on military training for working people. We need a policy for workers and farmers in the armed forces--an approach aimed at deepening working-class consciousness and advancing the fight of workers and farmers to defend their constitutional rights and class interests as they face the class brutalities of the officer corps, racism, and restrictions on political dissent. These policies must advance the struggle of our class and its allies to break from political dependence on the exploiters, the bosses' twin parties--Democrats and Republicans--and representatives, and the petty-bourgeois politicians of all varieties. Our policies must advance our class toward taking political power and establishing a workers' and farmers' government. Success in moving along that line of march is the true measure of any antiwar policy.

This is what the Socialist Workers Party has always referred to as our proletarian military policy, a perspective for the working class in response to the militarization policies of the capitalist rulers in the imperialist epoch. It begins not with military questions but with the proletariat. It presents a line of action to defend the class interests of workers and farmers in face of the militarization drives and imperialist wars that continued capitalist rule will inevitably bring. It begins with the concrete conditions in the class struggle, the level of consciousness and organization of the working class, and the relationship of forces between the exploited and exploiting classes. It begins with the intertwining of imperialism and war, not war in the abstract. It begins with the reality of class struggle, not the utopian search for class peace. It begins with "we," the workers and our toiling allies, counterposed to "them," the employers, their political representatives, and their aggression abroad.

The section of the Transitional Program entitled "The Picket Line, Defense Guards, Workers' Militia, the Arming of the Proletariat" summarizes the trajectory.³ This section of the 1938 program of the SWP describes the necessary development of the workers' movement that begins with the organization of picket lines to enforce strike action; proceeds to the creation of workers' groups for self-defense against the antilabor, fascist, and racist gangs the employers will resort to as the class confrontation intensifies; and goes from there to the preparation for a workers' militia, which will be "the one serious guarantee for the inviolability of workers' organizations, meetings, and press" under sharpening conditions of class warfare.

This line of march culminates in the arming of the workers and farmers in the battle to defend themselves against the counterrevolutionary onslaughts and fascist terror that the capitalist class will unleash to defend its rule.

A proletarian military policy--a policy of the working class to confront imperialist militarism--is thus an integral part of working-class strategy as workers and farmers move toward establishing their own government....

We have no illusion about the character of the imperialist army and its role in the world and in this country. It is a reactionary world police force of millions. It is organized to spread murder and terror around the globe. It can't be reformed or "humanized" by adding more women to it, or anything else. Only when the victorious workers and farmers in this country take apart that military machine and put together a different one will the future survival of humanity be guaranteed.

But we also know that the ranks of the armed forces are different from those in the police forces. The army is made up of young workers and farmers who join the "volunteer" army for a couple of years to get off the streets and get some promised job training or money for future education. The overwhelming majority of these young people are not "lifers"; they don't plan to spend their lives in the army. They are not part of the officer caste. They do not see themselves as willing parts of a repressive machine. They do not identify with the ruling class. Most important, they have not been declassed, as cops are. When workers or farmers join the police force, they abandon their class. But young working people who sign up for the armed forces do so because of the economic situation they face; the last thing they want to do is to go fight and die to protect the profits of the ruling families.

What's more, these citizen-soldiers are constantly being subjected to attempts to deny them their constitutional rights. The high percentage who are members of oppressed nationalities face organized racist discrimination aimed, in part, at keeping soldiers divided among themselves and therefore more submissive to the demands of the military brass. At all times they confront the anti-working-class officer corps--Black as well as white.

As the preparations for war increase--and as the toll on life and limb turns out to be different from what they have been led to believe--more and more GIs will seek to express their views. They will reach out with both hands to anyone they can find in civilian life who will help them do so, and help defend their rights in the process.

Among these young workers and farmers who today find themselves in the military machine are individuals who will be won to a revolutionary perspective and will join the Young Socialist Alliance and the Socialist Workers Party.  
 
Working-class campaign against imperialism and war
As with every aspect of our communist antiwar program, our starting point is the working class, not some special focus on the armed forces. The challenge of organizing growing numbers of citizen-soldiers into the fight against imperialism and war is not a matter of getting antiwar action coalitions to pay more attention to a "GI sector." It is part of our effort to build the kind of movement that can mobilize the social forces, the class forces, necessary to stay the hand of the U.S. rulers.
 

1. U.S. forces, first sent to Vietnam in 1950 as "advisers," eventually numbered 536,000 at their high point. In January 1973, after long negotiations, peace accords were signed in Paris. By March 1973 U.S. combat forces had been withdrawn. The Watergate crisis that erupted later that year began with the public exposure of the fact that the White House under President Richard Nixon had utilized burglaries and wiretaps and authorized FBI operations against even Democratic Party political competitors. Such methods had long been used against working-class organizations and the Black movement. The ensuing political crisis, rooted in deep divisions within the ruling class over Washington's defeat in Vietnam, led to the forced resignation of Nixon in 1974. Widely publicized congressional hearings in 1975–76--during which many more facts became known about the murderous operations of the FBI, CIA, and other political police agencies, both in the United States and abroad--further undermined public confidence in the truthfulness of those who spoke for U.S. government institutions.

2. Students, with the backing of the Iranian government, occupied the U.S. embassy in Tehran in November 1979 to protest Washington's decision to invite the deposed shah to the United States. Soviet troops--eventually numbering more than one hundred thousand--intervened in Afghanistan in late December 1979.

3. The Transitional Program was one of the founding documents of the Socialist Workers Party. Written by Leon Trotsky in Mexico City after discussions with SWP leaders, it was adopted by the SWP in 1938 following extensive discussion. For the section cited here, see Leon Trotsky, The Transitional Program for Socialist Revolution (New York: Pathfinder, 1977), pp. 123–26.  
 
 
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