Capitalist rulers across Europe held commemorations celebrating “Victory in Europe” Day last week, marking the end of the second imperialist world war there. At the same time, they’re pushing to crank up their militaries in preparation for more bloody slaughters, along with Washington, Beijing, Japan, Moscow and dozens of other powers.
These events celebrated World War II as a war of “democracy” over fascism. But all the capitalist combatants had the same goal — to expand their control over the resources, markets and profits at the expense of their rivals. In the epoch of imperialism, as the capitalist crisis deepens and class polarization sharpens, sections of the ruling class will again turn to fascist thugs to try to protect their predatory rule. They will go after Jews, militant workers, communists — anyone who stands in their way.
World War II was an inter-imperialist war between the rulers in London, Washington and their allies, against the rulers of Germany, Italy and Japan. Workers had no stake in their fight over the redivision of the world for plunder and for profit.
It was also a war to try to overturn the conquests of the Bolshevik-led revolution in Russia, however distorted by Stalinist rule, and restore capitalist exploitation. And it was a war in which oppressed peoples in India, China and elsewhere in the colonial world fought to take advantage of the world conflict to achieve national liberation.
As the war unfolded, workers worldwide sought the most favorable conditions to advance their own interests against their capitalist rulers, whether in the “democratic” imperialist countries or under fascist rule.
Before, during and after the war, the struggle continued to win working-class fighters to the course led by Leon Trotsky, who defended the working-class program of V.I. Lenin and the Bolsheviks against the counterrevolution carried out by Joseph Stalin in the Soviet Union. Trotsky succeeded in assuring that continuity survived, building communist parties worldwide in the face of Stalin’s betrayals of revolutionary struggles in Germany, Spain and elsewhere.
Far from organizing celebrations of Washington’s victory at the end of the war, the Aug. 18, 1945, Militant headline read “THERE IS NO PEACE! Only world socialism can save mankind from atomic destruction in another imperialist war! Workers of America! You must take power into your own hands!”
Today, the Socialist Workers Party continues to advance on this course, the only road that can stop Washington and other imperialist powers dragging humanity toward fascism and a third world war — building communist parties in the U.S. and worldwide that are tempered and rooted in the working class and strong enough to lead working people to make socialist revolutions.
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