Vol. 71/No. 41      November 5, 2007

What is the cause of the wars spreading across the globe? How can they be stopped?

Democratic contenders for the U.S. presidency argue that the problem is the incumbent, George Bush, and the Republican Party. Not a single one of these Democrats, of course, calls for immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq, not to mention Afghanistan. Despite the pretense of many of them to be for “peace,” the best their party in Congress could do last spring was pass a nonbinding bill for “phased redeployment.” When Bush vetoed it, they gave him every penny of the billions he requested.

Washington’s war drive is not a policy choice of this or that capitalist politician or party. It is a built-in necessity for an economic system—capitalism—and for the class of billionaire families that rules the United States. The same is true for their imperialist counterparts in Europe, Canada, Japan, and elsewhere.

This necessity is rooted in the long-term downward tendency of the employers’ profit rates and the sharpening economic competition and political conflicts among imperialist powers over redivision of world markets. No matter who is in the White House, or which capitalist party controls the Congress, the government is bound to represent these class interests—at the expense of working people abroad and at home.

This drive to war is an extension of the bosses’ drive to squeeze more out of working people at home, through speedup, slashing health insurance and pensions, and recklessly endangering safety on the job in the pursuit of higher profit rates. The war for profits at home goes hand in hand with the increased use of the police against working people and restrictions on political rights. This can be seen in the bipartisan bill to expand the government’s domestic spying powers, which will target unionists, Black rights fighters, and other opponents of U.S. government policies.

There is one social force that has the potential power and interest in stopping the capitalists’ wars at home and abroad: the workers and farmers who produce the wealth, in this country and worldwide. That is why the resistance today by working people to these attacks is the biggest obstacle facing the U.S. rulers’ war drive.

Thousands of immigrant workers have organized protests against the stepped-up raids and deportations by Homeland Security cops. Tens of thousands of working people and youth have been protesting racist discrimination and police brutality, most recently around the cases of the Jena Six in Louisiana and the acquittal of boot camp guards in Florida who killed Martin Lee Anderson, a 14-year-old Black youth.

The Young Socialists and the Socialist Workers Party are part of this resistance—in mines and factories, on picket lines, at protests by immigrant workers and opponents of imperialist war. They offer a revolutionary working-class strategy as part of fighting to build a movement that, in the course of struggle, can ultimately disarm the capitalist war makers once and for all. That will be done by replacing the capitalist rulers with a workers and farmers government as part of the worldwide struggle for socialism. Join them!
 
 
Related articles:
Pentagon launches U.S. Africa Command
Turkish troops mass on border of Iraqi Kurdistan  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home