11

War Is the Continuation of Politics

p The number of wars and major armed conflicts that have occurred throughout the recorded history of man runs into more than 14 thousand. The scale of wars and their effect on the future of the peoples have been growing all the time. In the era of imperialism wars affect the entire world. Humanity has gone through two destructive world wars: in 1914-1918 and in 1939-1945.

p Politically, there are just wars of-liberation, wars aimed at beating off foreign aggression. Then there are unjust, aggressive wars whose purpose it is to seize and enslave other nations. The Second World War was a just war 12 of liberation in so far as it was waged by the peoples against fascist aggression.

p Wars are not inevitable. There was a time when people did not know what war was, and the time is sure to come when war will be ruled out, banished from the life of society.

p The key to the mystery of the origins of war, and to the causes of the Second World War, is provided by the Marxist-Leninist definition of war as a continuation of the policies of a given state, or class, by violent methods. "And it was always the standpoint of Marx and Engels, who regarded any war as the continuation of the politics of the powers concerned-and the various classes within these countries-in a definite period.”  [12•1 

p The Second World War was unleashed by the German capitalist monopolies, by the Nazi leaders and by the German General Staff, but preparations for it had been made by international imperialism for the purpose of destroying the world’s first socialist state, the Soviet Union. Blind with class hatred, the imperialists sought to carry out their plans to destroy Soviet Russia back in 1918-1920 by supporting the internal counter-revolutionary forces, by open military intervention and blockade, but were thwarted in their designs. In the period between the two world wars the imperialists mounted an antiSoviet campaign.

p The chief instigators of this campaign were the American and British imperialists who sought to use Germany and Japan, their main rivals, in the struggle against the USSR. The U.S. and British monopolists hoped that by doing so they would destroy the socialist state and would also weaken their rivals.

p The military danger was particularly great when the Nazis came to power in Germany. As was pointed out at the Seventh Congress of the Comintern (1935), the transition of the bourgeoisie to the fascist methods of 13 ensuring its rule was part and parcel of its preparation for a new world war.

p The forces of imperialism which stoked up the flames of the Second World War thus fqund themselves torn between the two opposite historical trends as discovered by Lenin. On the one hand, the imperialist states wanted to stay united so as to uphold their class interests and the whole system of exploitation, and consequently were all ranged against the Soviet Union and poised for a clash between the two socio-political systems. On .the other hand, the contradictions between individual capitalist states tended to grow deeper and deeper, with rival coalitions forming as a result.

p Supported by all the progressive forces of the world, the Soviet Union opposed war and fascism. The prewar years were marked by the strenuous efforts of the Communist Party and the Soviet Government to create a system of collective security and curb fascist aggression, also by the Soviet Union’s actions in defence of Ethiopia, Spain, China, Austria, Czechoslovakia, and by varied, including military, assistance it extended to many countries which had fallen victim to aggression.

p A new feature of the prewar situation was the fact that communist and workers’ parties of the Leninist type were active in most of the capitalist countries. These parties were equipped with a knowledge of the laws of social development and steeled in class struggles. The communist parties formed a powerful social force which stood up against the imperialist plans to unleash a world war. They also laid bare the policy of connivance with the aggressors and fought to curb the growth of the malignant tumour of fascism. And when the war did break out the communist and workers’ parties mounted the struggle for the national revival of the enslaved countries.

The Second World War began as an armed clash within the imperialist camp. The leading powers of the Anglo-French and German-Italian coalitions had failed to .achieve a compromise and in this way to join efforts in their struggle against the USSR. The anti-Soviet 14 conspiracy was foiled by the Leninist foreign policy of the CPSU which made good use of the contradictions between capitalist countries in the interests of the security of socialism. The USSR never threatened anyone but it checked any and all provocations by the aggressors and for almost two years resisted being drawn into the Second World War and continued its peaceful pursuits, at the same time strengthening its defences. Significantly, the rival coalitions continued to be deeply hostile to the Soviet Union, and to socialism in general, so that even while trading blows, these capitalist rivals never abandoned their efforts to wreck the Soviet state, the birthplace of socialism. History has presented an unpayable account to imperialism which started that terrible war.

In the Tangle of Contradictions

p In order to whitewash imperialism, which has always been and will remain a source of wars, bourgeois ideologists are deliberately distorting the facts as to the causes of wars and their social and class character, thus confusing the issue. They regard war outside the development of capitalism, outside the economic relations and policies of the exploiter classes, and are trying to conceal the true instigators of aggression.

p One of the favourite arguments resorted to by bourgeois theoreticians is that "war is a natural condition of society". Wars have always been and will always be fought while the human race exists-this is the cornerstone of their most widely used concept, supported by a host of anthropological, theological and other "arguments". Margaret Mead (USA) regards war as "a recognized conflict between two groups as groups, in which each group puts an army ... into the field to fight and kill, if possible, some of the members of the army of the other group". "Warfare of this sort," she continues, "is an invention like any other ... such as writing, marriage, 15 cooking our food instead of eating it raw, trial by jury or burial of the dead, and so on.”  [15•1 

p Professor John G. Stoessinger writes in his book Why Nations Go to War that all attempts to link the causes of war with militarism, military blocs and economic factors are nothing but lifeless abstractions. In his opinion "war should be seen to occur in generations cycles", and as a natural course of things in the life of every generation of people.  [15•2 

p Also widely circulating are different kinds of theological theories according to which "wars are preordained and permitted by God”,  [15•3  "a just peace can be found only in the world beyond", and there can be no peace on earth.  [15•4  The West German philosopher Reinhart Koselleck backs his theory with the fact that in spite of the efforts of F. D. Roosevelt, who shortly before his death in April 1945 confirmed his resolve to work for a lasting peace, the globe has over the past several years, just as before, been in the grip of civil wars, armed conflicts, etc.  [15•5  His book offers no analysis of the military threat by imperialism and passes over in silence the fact that the growing forces of peace, democracy and socialism have for close to four decades been trying to ward off the conflagration of a third world war.

p Bourgeois theoreticians most often look for the causes of war in "hasty" decisions by government leaders, in the poor efficiency of intelligence services, and in other factors which are either accidental or unimportant.

p In his analysis of the prewar foreign policy of the United States, Waverly Root inferred in 1945 that "the disastrous record of American foreign policy can 16 be ascribed to factors no more exotic than misinformation, short-sightedness, small-mindedness and the human weakness for self-justification and rationalization which led American diplomats, once engaged in a mistaken way, to persist in it, in preference to admitting or even perceiving the error”.  [16•1  Some twenty-five years later John Toland said essentially the same thing. For instance, in his analysis of the events that brought Japan into a war against the United States he wrote: "The trouble was that both America and Japan were like children. Diplomatically, neither was mature. Now the two children were playing foolish war games."  [16•2 

Also prevalent in the Western literature on the subject is the agnostic interpretation of the causes of war. This view rejects, either in full or in part, the possibility of even understanding, to say nothing of explaining the causes of war. Significant in this respect is the interpretation of the concept of "war" that some Western scholars from a number of countries give in the voluminous Encyclopaedia Universalis published in France. According to this extensive study which consists of a gamut of contradictory concepts, "war is a universally established fact. It is very difficult even to trace the direct transition from a clash between two individuals or two families to a dash between two more or less considerable groups, which could justifiably be called a war" .  [16•3 

In Search of New Theories

p At the present level of development of historical science, at a time when the.problems of war and peace have come under public scrutiny, such primitive disquisitions can hardly pass muster. This axiomatic truth has led Western scholars to mount a search for new "war 17 doctrines" suitable for the exploiter classes. In France, the FRG, Italy, Holland and some other countries, special polemology research centres have sprung up to study the causes of wars (from the Greek polemos-wa.r and logos - science).

p According to polemologists, war arises from a disbalance of different age groups in society. If a country shows a tendency for rapid growth of the younger part of the population and has developed the socio-economic conditions that make it impossible to provide all young people with jobs, a demographic situation will arise which the polemologists call "an explosive structure" or "a bellicose demographic structure".

p The explosive structure is conducive to social disturbances, bellicose impulses which build up towards collective aggressiveness and social upheavals, and towards elimination of the more active part of the population through war.

p By giving undue prominence to the socio-biological causes of war and by divorcing war from economics and politics, polemologists absolve the ruling classes and the governments of the imperialist states of all responsibility for unleaishing wars and virtually justify any form of aggression. They claim, for instance, that all major imperialist acts of aggression were nothing but population explosions., each act corresponding to the highest degree of internal social instability stemming from "an excess of young people”.  [17•1  Following this line of reasoning they contend that Nazi Germany and fascist Italy waged their aggressive wars primarily because both had an explosive demograp hie structure emanating strong bellicose impulses, and bothi had built up an "aggressive potential". In substance this conclusion shatters the pseudoscientific claims of the polemologists that their "science" can rid humanity of all wars.

p Another established line taken by Western scholars in explaining the causes of war is the so-called inter- 18 disciplinary ("complex") approach to the phenomenon of war, and especially the political factor as it was formulated by Clausewitz in the nineteenth century. The German military theoretician Carl von Clausewitz, whose views were influenced by the social upheavals and wars following the French Revolution, was opposed to the interpretation put on war by metaphysicians who still wield influence in the West. He held, for example, that war "is a particular manifestation of social relations". The central point in his war doctrine was the inter-cohnection between war and politics. "War is nothing but a continuation of state politics by different means",  [18•1  he said in elaboration of his view that war was impossible outside politics. "War in human society-among nations, and particularly among civilised nations-always stems from a political situation and is always politically motivated."  [18•2 

p Examining Clausewitz’s formula Lenin pointed out that war was not merely the continuation of the politics of the powers concerned by other, violent means, but the continuation of the policy of a definite class in concrete historical conditions. This is the substance of the problem which underlies the causes and character of any war. Today many Western scholars specialising in this problem are compelled to admit that "Marxism-Leninism possesses the most fully elaborated theory of war."  [18•3 

p The "complex" theory of war, which, its authors admit, leaves too many loose ends, was originated by the American theorist Quincy Wright at the time of the Second World War. Wright believed that "war has politicotechnological, juro-ideological, socio-religious, and psychoeconomic causes".  [18•4 

p In A Study of War, Wright synthesised Clauzewitz’s 19 concept, and various biological, anthropological and theological views in these words: "While man has original drives that make war possible, that possibility has only been realized in appropriate social and political conditions."  [19•1  How could war be prevented? The author fails to give a clear-cut answer to this fundamental question.

p Notable among the schools that study the causes of war are the school of "political realism" and the school of "political idealism". The names of these schools in the historiography and theory of international relations stand not so much for the concepts of idealism and realism in the conventional sense of the terms, but for very definite political trends in foreign policy. The supporters of the school of political idealism claim that foreign policy actions taken by capitalist countries are motivated by lofty aspirations, the struggle for the moral values of a nation, and other similar idealistic motives. The exponents of the second school proceed from the assumption that countries rely exclusively on force and resort to moral considerations only to justify its use.

p Western authors often "combine" the views of the two schools. The American historian and diplomat George F. Kennan apparently followed the views of "political realism" when he wrote that "the legalistic approach to international relations is faulty".  [19•2  At the same time his interpretation of the political and diplomatic decisions of the U. S. government bears the mark of the school of "political idealism" and the theories of "moral causality". For example, Kennan interpreted the imperialistic tendencies of his country in the late 19th century by the established traditions and by the widely accepted claim that the Americans "simply liked the smell of empire", "liked to see our flag flying on distant tropical islands", "to bask in the sunshine of recognition as one of the great imperial powers of the world". The debate 20 between the "advocates of idealism" and the "advocates of realism" continues to this day.  [20•1 

p The different views on the causes of war may create the impression that bourgeois theoreticians and historians have no common roots in their interpretation of this problem. This is not so, of course. Far as they may be from genuine science and historical practice, and contradictory as may be their views on the causes of war, including the causes of the Second World War, these different "schools" and groups of Western historians and philosophers are all at one in their desire to conceal, in every possible way, the responsibility of imperialism for starting both world wars.  [20•2 

p Methods of achieving this goal vary depending on the political leanings of the historian, his credentials as a scholar and, of course, the purpose of his work, the market and certain other factors.

p In his book The American Approach to Foreign Policy Professor Dexter Perkins asks this question: "Is There an American Imperialism?" Replying to this question, he apparently tries to convince his readers that the concept of "imperialism" is "a Russian propaganda device", that the United States has never been, nor is it today, an imperialist country.  [20•3  And since there is no imperialism in the United States, there is no basis for accusing it of having a hand in starting the Second World War.

p Meanwhile the history of the United States as an imperialist country is a record of numerous aggressive wars, of the fierce and bloody struggle of monopoly capital for world domination, the exploitation of its own working people, the suppression of progressive popular movements, and finally, the scheming of its ruling elite against the world’s first socialist state. All this goes to 21 show that the term "American imperialism" is not just "a Russian propaganda device" and not an "anti-communist entity", but a very concrete socio-political phenomenon, and in fact the leading force of world imperialism.

There are a few Western historians who admit, albeit in a limited and nebulous way, that the chief responsibility for wars rests with the imperialists. L. L. Farrar notes, for example, that "imperialism reflected the view that the state system was essentially’ competitive and that view perhaps prepared people to accept war as an appropriate, indeed necessary, policy outcome”.  [21•1 

Fascism Is War

p The attempts to conceal the aggressive nature of imperialism can clearly be seen in the interpretation of the substance of fascism, the system that unleashed the Second World War. The study of fascism, if there is any, is reduced, as a rule, to attempts to camouflage its class essence and merely enumerate the changes which took place in the policies of the Axis countries after Hitler, Mussolini and the Japanese militarists had taken over in their countries. "The advent of Hitler set off the rearmament of Germany", this stereotype directly or indirectly made Hitler and his "psychopathic personality" exclusively responsible for the Second World War. In his book, The End of Glory, Laurence Lafore puts forth a version of his own, imputing to fascism "the most leftist and revolutionary programmes of the time: abolition of monarchy and nobility, anticlericalism and anticapitalism", although in the final analysis it succumbed to the pressure of "wild chauvinism" and "upgrading of organization". The author concludes that fascism was "to a considerable extent the work of cheap political jobbery".  [21•2  Robert Leckie in his book The Wars of America links 22 fascism in Germany and Italy with authoritarian nationalism, and the variety of fascism that prevailed in Japan with theocratic militarism. The reader, however, gets lost in the maze of terms and vaguely worded pronouncements and hypotheses, and fails to trace the organic link between imperialism, fascism and war.

p The country where fascism seems to have come under constant scrutiny, both in literature and in the press, is the Federal Republic of Germany. Most commonly it is described as the product of the interplay of certain "irrational factors" which brought forth the "fatal", "demoniac personality" of Adolf Hitler. In their attempts to present Hitler as some sort of "superman" many Western historians claim that "national socialism was Hitler’s own creation"  [22•1  and it was he himself that shaped history "with such a monumental high-handedness"  [22•2 .

p As far back as the Nuremberg Trial of the leading Nazi war criminals, the idea was being peddled in the West that Hitler alone was responsible for the outbreak of the Second World War. Churchill noted at the time that "it was in the interest of the parties concerned after they were the prisoners of the Allies to dwell upon their efforts for peace".  [22•3  Echoing the ex-Nazi generals and German monopolists who persisted at the trial in their version that it was impossible to curb Hitler’s drive for war, many Western historians still write that "the greatest war of all time" began not as a logical historical development, that is to say, it did not result from the policies of the imperialists, but was unleashed in cold blood by the evil spirit of Adolf Hitler obsessed by total destruction.  [22•4 

23

p The prevalent trend in bourgeois history-writing to exaggerate Hitler’s role in the emergence of fascism and war has been modified over the years into the tendency of giving the fascist leaders "a human face". The books of the West German historian Werner Maser are a typical example of this. At first glance his writings seem to have no clearly defined concept. In fact, he ventures no conclusions or evaluations of his own. In the preface to his book about Hitler he writes for example: "I must admit that the documents and my own work on this book held many surprises in store."  [23•1  You may wonder what kind of surprises. The very idea of writing this book was to show Hitler in quite a different colour. Not as a maniac and tyrant, but as a sentimental and quite amiable person. The author tries to seem aloof when commenting on the documents he quotes. But his bias is obvious when he "argues" with the Fiihrer’s overt supporters and sympathisers who present him as a "servant of Germany". Maser’s comment: "This was only partly correct."  [23•2 

p Soviet researchers quite correctly emphasise that such evaluations not only fly in the face of the truth, but are also very dangerous since they constitute a kind of tribute to fascism and its leaders.  [23•3 

p Another typical feature of West German historiography is a desire to present fascism as a social movement of the petty bourgeoisie and the lower middle class, and to obscure the leading role played by the more reactionary wing of the monopoly bourgeoisie in the establishment of fascist dictatorship. According to Helga Grebing, fascism was born of the middle classes which were neither the working nor the exploiter class. So, she concludes, "one can practically speak about the 24 classless nature of fascism".  [24•1  Echoing this opinion, Richard Saage put forward a thesis of the middle strata of society giving rise to the "third class" which in turn made fascism its "decisive" force.  [24•2 

p The much touted "mass society" theory serves essentially the same purpose.  [24•3  The protagonists of this theory have proclaimed our age the age of the masses, and are trying to prove that the seizure by the National Socialists of political power in 1933 amounted to a "revolution" which showed mankind a "third way" of of development, neither capitalist nor socialist.  [24•4 

p In actual fact fascism was used to suppress the revolutionary movement of the peoples, and particularly that of the working class, and its vanguard, the international communist movement. As was pointed out at the Seventh Congress of the Communist International in 1935, "Fascist Germany is plainly showing to the whole world what the masses of the people may expect where fascism is victorious. The raging fascist government is annihilating the flower of the working class, its leaders and organizers, in jails and concentration camps. It has destroyed the trade unions, the cooperative societies, all legal organizations of the workers as well as all other non-fascist political and cultural organizations. It has deprived the workers of the elementary right to defend their interests. It has converted a highly cultured country into a hotbed of obscurantism, barbarity and war."   [24•5 

p The fascist dictatorships in Italy, Germany and some 25 other capitalist countries were established in the 1920s and 1930s as a result of imperialism’s onslaught on the working people. The reactionary forces took advantage of the split in the working class, precipitated primarily by the right opportunist leaders of Social Democracy who were preaching social partnership and anti-communism. But wherever a broad popular front was set up on the initiative of Communists, as was the case in France, fascism was unable to grab power. In Spain, on the other hand, the fascists succeeded solely owing to direct military support from the fascist regimes in Italy and Germany, which sent troops to that country in 1936-1939.

p The ruling classes of the imperialist states who plunged the world into the Second World War pursued interests that were totally alien to the popular masses. The much hated fascist regimes threatened not only the freedom, but the very existence of whole nations. Led by the Communists, the popular masses fought against fascism and in this way defended their right to life, liberty and social progress.

p Another attempt to explain the reasons for the Second World War is a study undertaken by a group of historians headed by Manfred Messerschmidt at the MilitaryHistory Research Department of the Bundeswehr, published in the first volume of Das Deutsche Reich und der Zweite WeUkrieg. Its authors are clearly out to lead the way for all other bourgeois historians on this question when they declare "the need to integrate all the existing research mostly for providing abundant information for those readers who are interested in history”.  [25•1 

p The various ideological, economic, military and foreign policy aspects of Germany’s preparations for war are analysed in considerable detail with the ensuing, though highly qualified, admission of the aggressive nature of German imperialism and the guilt that the fascist Reich bore for initiating the Second World War.

p The authors touch upon some social aspects of Germany’s war-motivated policy. "Fear of a revolution was the 26 context in which Hitler’s policy developed..."  [26•1  they said, putting the onus for Germany’s policy on "the bourgeois national groups and their representatives at the Foreign Ministry, in the Wehrmacht, in the economy and science, who carried on the national traditions of the country.... They hailed and supported rearmament in every way possible.... Their aim was to extend the great power positions of Germany far beyond a mere revision of the Versailles Treaty by incorporating Eastern Europe, the Eastern Empire.... The use of military force in these political calculations was regarded as a matter of fact.”  [26•2 

This specious line of reasoning is nothing but an attempt to lay the entire blame for the war at Hitler’s door and in this way to exonerate the German monopoly capitalists of the crimes of fascism. The authors are clearly trying to disprove the Comintern assessment of fascism as a dictatorship of the most reactionary, chauvinistic elements of finance capital. They cite the Comintern definition of fascism and then hasten to add that "Hitler cannot by rights be regarded as a puppet of finance capital. Was it not Hitler who held sway over the masses in prewar Germany? This specifically applied to the period after the year 1936 and through the entire war. It was he who laid down the policies leading to the outbreak of hostilities on September 1. Had it not been for Hitler there would have been no war in Europe which broke out on September 1, 1939."  [26•3  In other words, today’s West German historians have taken up this new line of reasoning to give a fresh lease on life to the old myth of Hitler’s undivided personal responsibility for the war, and in this way to brighten up the facade of imperialism and fascism- not without some important shift of emphasis, of course.

27

Under the Flag of Anti-Communism

p Finally, modern bourgeois theories about war have one thing in common-their anti-communism. Moderate conservatives and neo-fascists, liberal Malthusians, eclectics, and theologians are all trying, each in his own way, to bend their arguments so as to somehow link the causes of war with the revolutionary struggle of the working people and to make believable their allegation that the socialist system also had a hand in the unleashing of the Second World War. The American theoretician Louis Fischer clamours that "war, not peace, is the crucible of communism".  [27•1 

p Such pseudo-historical "views" have been promoted, especially in the past several years, in order to justify the aggressive aspirations of monopoly capital which are particularly evident in the foreign policy of the United States, its allies and satellites spearheaded against the USSR and against all revolutionary forces of our time.  [27•2  "All the crusades of our epoch are promoted by ’political commissars’- with a new political creed."  [27•3 

p At the same time some theoreticians take a more realistic view of the international events that preceded the Second World War. Raymond L. Garthoff (USA) writes that right from the inception of the Soviet state it "became an axiom of Soviet policy that war should be avoided". The Soviet republic, he goes on to say, "renounced all of imperial Russia’s economic, political, and military rights ... abroad-in Turkey, Persia, Afghanistan, Sinkiang, Tuva, Manchuria and China". Garthoff pointed out that "military force was not overtly used [by the Soviet state-TV.] from 1921...", the Soviet Union did not want a war with Finland, that "on a number of 28 occasions after 1921, the Russians led in championing disarmament".  [28•1  Despite the author’s anti-socialist bias, the above evaluations of Soviet foreign policy give additional proof that the arguments used by reactionary historians are unfounded.

p Richard J, Barnet, another American historian, concludes from his study of U.S. foreign policy that the main source of war should be sought in the nature of the imperialist nations. In his book, Roots of War, he raises this question; what are the national interests that the United States sought to serve by "spreading death, terror, and destruction"?  [28•2  In answering this question he writes: "By any historical definition the United States is an empire. From the birth of the Republic in 1776 to the outbreak of World War II the area under the dominion of the United States increased from 400,000 square miles to 3,738,393 square miles.... In World War II the United States did not legally annex further territory, but it assumed total control of ’strategic trust territories’ and other bases and thereby increased its global domain...."  [28•3 

p Looking ahead Barnet points out that "war is a social institution, that America’s permanent war can be explained primarily by looking at American Society, and that America’s wars will cease only if that society is changed."  [28•4  Barnet proposes to eliminate war by putting through reforms in America’s politics and economy, by curbing the power of the military industrial complex, and by renouncing America’s endless claims on other countries. In this sense his approach is constructive in so far as it reveals the true causes of war and charts ways for amelioration of the international situation. However, most present-day bourgeois authors take a view different from Barnet’s and are trying to find the answer to another, very different question: how did it happen that the Second World War began with a clash between 29 imperialist coalitions, making it impossible to create a united front of imperialist powers directed against the Soviet Union? In their pragmatic way, they try to draw a lesson from this "fatal mistake". They analyse the Versailles system of treaties, the rearmament of Nazi Germany, the emergence of fascism, the policy of appeasement, the collapse of collective security plans for Europe, indeed, many of the factors that led to the Second World War and which have been examined carefully from Marxist positions. However, the bourgeois interpretation of these events willfully misrepresents them, and is, of course, anti-Soviet in spirit. Some of these bourgeois theoreticians and historians claim that "The only thing the United States could have done to maintain peace would have been to have stationed American troops permanently in Western Europe.”  [29•1  This approach clearly shows that reactionary studies are turning into a direct apology for NATO’s aggressive plans and for militarism in even broader terms.

The sweeping anti-war movement in Western Europe shows that the broad segments of public opinion are becoming increasingly aware of the true dimensions of the military threat inherent in the deployment of American troops in foreign countries.