The producers news. [volume] (Plentywood, Mont.) 1918-1937, 1936-02-21
WAR AND THE WORKERS.

continues without interruption: &C.
ononnic struggles for sources OF
raw mateial, for new markets, for
now fields of exploitation; tariff
and exchange battles; competition
for shipping and loans; explora,,
ton to discover new mlnes' OH
wells. land for rubber and coffee
and cotton plantations; and all
the rest.
Rnt the conflict can never re-
main at the purely economic level.
The stakes are too high-failure
at the economic level means the
destruction of the defeated econ
onnic group. Therefore the finance
capitalists must utilize constantly
their political servants-the gov
ernments Of their respective coun-
tries. And the governments are
not slow to answer. They build up
their military and naval arma-
ments to almost unbelievable
heights. They are ever ready to IN
seat a Central American govern
ment. threaten a native prince,
wipe out "red bandits, stop or
start a revolution, send a flotllla
of warships or a regiment OF
marines, resent an insult to the
flag, if necessary set two coun-
tries-Bolivia and Paraguay, for
example-flying at each others
throats to settle the dispute Of
Standard Oil and Shell over rights
to an oil field. At the beck and
call of finance-capital, the govern
ment, with the guns and cruisers
and airplanes, snaps quickly to
attention. That, indeed, is what
the governments are for.
The economic conflicts and
minor wars" of capital expansion
of tariff and exchange and arma~
ment and competitive exploitation,
reach a point where the attempt
is made to find a political solution
of the economic and social contra
dictions through war, open and
undisguised: imperialist-inspired
wars between subject nations;
wars of subjugation by imperial
list nations against subject peo-
pies; and finally, the worldwide
war of the imperialist nations
among themselves, fighting for
the redivision of the world. But,
though producing a temporary
"boom" by loosening the bonds on
capital expansion, by the destruc-
ton existing capital values and
bv credit expansion, the open
wars, far from solving the con-
flicts, only express their depth
and prepare for still more bitter
conflict to come.
The full story does not end
even here. For throughout the
bloody imperialist chaos, and ex-
pressing the deepest of all the
conflicts, there is being fought
constantly the basic and decisive
war of our age: the revolutionary
war of the working class against
its exploiters. This war, which af
ter generations of preparation, be-
gan on a world scale with the Oc
tober Revolution in Russia, con
tinues within every country in &
thousand varying forms, from
strikes to armed uprisings to pre-
parations for intervention in thu
Soviet Union, and will continue
until the final issue is decided.
The war between the workinc
class and the bourgeoisie is utter
ly irreconcilable, in a far NOR,
profound sense even than the ii
tanic struggles between the imper
lalist powers themselves. It cal
never stop short of complete vic
tory. And this will serve to dem
onstrate how vain is the belle
! that the Soviet Union can stan,
aside, even for a short while, from
the imperiaist struggles, in
! pseudo-socialist isolation. L
spite OF its traitorous Leadership
) the Soviet Union still remains
! working class state. The basi
conflict between the Soviet Unio
and all the imperialist power,
therefore, is deeper than that he
. tween any of the imperialist now
: ers, themselves. The fate oF IN
2 Soviet Union is bound up inextriC
ably with the fate of the who
. world. The coming open impel
: ialist war will involve in its root
: the life or death of the Soviet Jr
ion. ~
t The moral, religious, racial an
; theological DISCUSSES that wa
g wears must not be allowed to hid
the fundamental conflicts whic
e are the true source of mods