Workers World, Vol. 23, No. 20
April 28, 1981: No effective anti-war movement can take root or develop unless it is based on a clear understanding of the fundamental driving forces in contemporary capitalist society.
Since time immemorial, the people of all national and on all continents have striven for peace and have in every way shown a yearning for a peaceful solution to conflicts among peoples, without the use of force or violence as an instrument of national policy.
Scholars, politicians, statesmen, and historians have all vied with each other in attempts to explain the causes of war.
Some have advanced the theory that “man” is inherently aggressive and warlike. Others explain it on the basis of morality, race, or the general incompatibility of people with different cultural backgrounds. Still others explain war on the basis of the human psyche. And, of course, even to this day, some explain it on the basis of divergent religious views.
For instance, only today (April 28, 1981), a front-page article in the New York Times, which deals with the struggle in the Reagan administration over foreign policy, ended with this paragraph:
“But the [White House] official acknowledged that leaders in some segments in the nation had disapproved of specific foreign policy steps.” Then it goes on to say, “Jewish groups have criticized the Saudi arms package and many Roman Catholic church leaders have criticized the sending of military aid to El Salvador where right-wing terrorism has been directed at church officials.”
Superficially this statement is correct. But the implication is that religion and nationality have something to do with the foreign policy conflicts in the Reagan administration.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
Of course, some Jewish groups have criticized the Saudi arms package. And some Roman Catholic leaders have attacked the El Salvador fascist junta. But are religion and nationality the causes of the wars in El Salvador and in the Middle East? Are Israeli planes pouring death-dealing havoc on Lebanon in order to defend Judeo-Christian values against the Muslims?
Religion has absolutely nothing whatever to do with the genocidal struggle in El Salvador, the Mideast, or northern Ireland.
Aside from the fact that both the Salvadoran junta and the Salvadoran people are Catholic, the element of Catholicism is a non sequitur. The junta has become so completely isolated and has so antagonized almost every section of society in El Salvador that it has even alienated the church hierarchy, which for many centuries has been a force for conservatism and the status quo there.
The fact that the junta has even resorted to the murder of nuns and other clerics is a measure of the extremes to which this puppet regime of the U.S. is resorting in order to preserve itself as a base for the U.S.
Even if the junta were Protestant as against a Catholic population, this too would make little difference so far as the fundamental cause of the war is concerned.
The overriding issue—the true and absolutely incontestable cause of the war—lies in the nature of imperialism and its colonialist as well as neocolonialist expansionist character. Failure to make this clear can only obscure the issue and in the long run weaken and make ineffective the opposition to this murderous U.S. war of aggression.
It is not fundamentally different in the struggle between the Israelis and the Arab people. Religion and culture are not the motivating forces that have driven them to violence and conflict over so many years in the recent epoch.
Here again, it is imperialism that is responsible. Both the Israeli and the Saudi states are puppets of U.S. imperialism. Imperialism regards it as essential to its predatory interests to balance one against the other in order to maintain overall mastery of the Persian Gulf and the fabulous wealth in the form of the tremendous oil resources in the region.
Imperialism seeks to arm both the Israeli and the Saudi governments. It needs them both. At the moment, because of the significance of oil, it is veering away from excessive preferential treatment of the Israeli garrison state in favor of the Saudis, as perhaps the more formidable and the more necessary of the two.
But whether imperialism supports one of the other, its essential policy is based not on difference of culture or religion. This is for mass, popular consumption to deceive the masses and keep them in a state of perpetual agitation and confrontation against each other, to prevent anti-imperialist solidarity in the region, and to exterminate all proponents of revolutionary working-class internationalism.
On the same day in which the New York Times carried this message on El Salvador and the Middle East, it also carried news that Bobby Sands, one of the leaders of the Irish Republican Army who was recently elected to the British Parliament, is close to death as a result of a hunger strike, which is now in its 58th day, imposed upon him by the British government.
It has been drummed into the public by the Times and other capitalist newspapers that religion is the basis of the struggle, because the majority of the people in Ireland are Catholic while the British government is Protestant.
Here again nothing could be further from the truth. Religion is no more the cause of it there than in El Salvador or the Middle East. The cause lies deep in the roots of British imperialist domination and its unwillingness to surrender its colonial possession. It continues a policy of pillage and plunder and maintains an overwhelming military force to secure its position against a people who have been struggle for freedom and independence for centuries.
The anti-war movement in this country cannot possibly become rooted in the mass movement and come to grips with Pentagon militarism unless it fully appreciates the nature of capitalist monopoly domination over all the vital arteries of economic life in this country. No realistic plans, no grand strategy, and no correct tactical approaches can in the long run be fashioned unless this one fundamental fact of contemporary life in the U.S. is first taken into account.
Endless discussion about correction “U.S. foreign policy,” of projecting this or that “sane” policy as against the madness of the Pentagon, imploring the government to be cautious, to be less bellicose or aggressive, to try to project an image of friendliness and cooperation, etc., etc., merely helps to embellish the nature of the capitalist government. It only helps to sow illusions. It obscures the stark reality.
It is monopoly capitalism that controls foreign policy. And it is impossible for an imperialist government not to follow an imperialist policy.
One capitalist administration may be slightly more moderate than the other. One may use some sugar-coated phrases to cover the predatory objectives. But the fundamental objective is the same—the lust for super-profits by the giant multinational corporations and the ever-larger and more powerful financial and industrial conglomerates, which are ever more interwoven with the capitalist state.
From this it follows that the U.S. capitalist establishment cannot pursue a “good war” in one area and a bad one in another. It is an erroneous assumption that it is possible for monopoly capitalism to pursue a progressive foreign policy goal in the Middle East and a reactionary one in Namibia, Angola, El Salvador, or Vietnam.
These are really different variants of the same predatory imperialist policy. For the anti-war movement to confine itself to only one of the areas is to fight a one-sided struggle and at best can only confuse the general fight against imperialism.
To be a truly broad-based, realistic, and significant force, the anti-war movement must be thoroughly anti-imperialist on a worldwide scale. To counter the so-called internationalism of the monopolist capitalist class, it is necessary to promote the internationalism of the working class, which is worldwide and can have no other aim but a peaceful world, a world based upon a social order free from capitalist exploitation and imperialist oppression.
Last updated: 11 May 2026