Imperialism

By the beginning of the 20th century, the rise of capitalist monopolies and finance capital had laid the basis for a new stage of world capitalism, the imperialism stage, and a different era of warfare: imperialist war.
By the end of the 19th century, capitalism had broken out of the restricted limits of national economy. Competition among the major groups of capitalists, new investment outlets, markets, strategic raw materials and cheap supplies of labour-power became global.
This distinctive phase of capitalism — imperialism — has remained the life-and-death economic imperative of the system up to the present time. The character of imperialist wars defines the reactionary nature of contemporary capitalism, and its over-ripeness for socialist transformation. Under imperialism, the immense accumulation of wealth and the technological and scientific advances of humanity, rather than serving human needs, have become the means to create surreal weapons of mass destruction.
These weapons and other “life-saving” devices of capitalism illuminate the reactionary traits of imperialist war: its propensity for historically unprecedented mass slaughter (25 million dead in World War I; 55 million dead in World War II) and the direction of this carnage at civilians. Prior to the World War I, 10% of the victims were typically civilian casualties. In both world wars and in the imperialist wars against Korea and Vietnam, the majority of those killed were civilians. These facts are the most damning indictment that this social system is a form of modern barbarism.
We oppose all imperialist wars as reactionary wars for the perpetuation and extension of the oppression and exploitation of foreign peoples..
No imperialist army, of course, marches off to war under the slogans “Higher Corporate Profits” or “Blood for Oil” on its banners. The imperialist rulers’ ideological agents — its politicians and its mass media — work overtime to convince ordinary people that the war they are fighting is against tyranny, for democracy, for defence of their families against aggression or for some other “noble” purpose that masks the true imperialist war aims and big capital’s class interests. Socialist opposition to imperialist wars often has to start with exposure of these ideological lies, establishing the real aims and politics of the war.