Peace between peoples, war on billionaires!

Today, ‘civilised’ Europe is arming itself to the teeth. Instead of the pleasant promises of peace, progress and well-being with which they usually lull our consciences to sleep, the perspective they offer us is one of war, destruction and suffering. As in the dramas of ancient Greece, the cheerful face of Thalia gives way to the stern countenance of Melpomene: tragedy is called to the stage. Be that as it may, we prefer that the true face of capitalism is exposed, instead of its mask.

Who has decided on these warmongering impulses? Not the working class of each country, whose daily efforts sustain society, the millions who endure the anonymous existence of work, study, unemployment, suffering, dreams, and frustrations. Those who decide what happens are the handful of rich and powerful people who govern society behind our backs and who live off the labour of others: both the workers at home, and in those countries plundered and impoverished by European imperialism. 

The working class aspires to live in peace and dignity, but the big capitalists need to use the most ruthless violence to settle scores with their imperialist rivals in the fight for markets, sources of raw materials and spheres of domination and influence. Instead of using the fruits of human labour to build, they squander it on destruction and death.

Change in inter-imperialist relations

There is nothing new under the sun. But it is true that this policy of rearmament in Europe, which has been in the making for some years, has appeared to the public as something sudden and unexpected. It is the function of communists to shed light where the bourgeoisie wants to cast a cloak of darkness to hide the class interests involved in this rearmament policy.

Apparently, there is one man to blame for all of this: Donald Trump, who has decided to reduce the financial and military contribution of the US to NATO, – the US provides more than 60 percent of its budget – forcing the Europeans to take over.

Trump has simply come to terms with the fact that the US is a declining power that can no longer act as the world's policeman and must make way for emerging imperialisms such as China and Russia / Image: Own work

But Trump's decision is not based on any personal anti-European outburst or mania, as some would have it. Trump has simply come to terms with the fact that the US is a declining power that can no longer act as the world's policeman and must make way for emerging imperialisms such as China and Russia. Trump's policy is to entrench the US in its ‘natural’ areas of dominance: the Americas, the Pacific and the Arctic. It is here that he has decided to focus his ‘defence’ efforts. 

His direct enemy is not Russia, but China, which threatens the US domestic market with its exports, as well as the US’ control of sources of raw materials and markets in Latin America and Asia. The US no longer has any significant interests to defend in Europe and sees Russia as a potential commercial ally and supplier of raw materials. 

What is irrational is not Trump's policy, but the illusion in which Europe is living, unable to come to terms with the profound changes in the world situation and its irrelevant role in the ongoing inter-imperialist conflicts. It is not that Trump has turned everything upside down; the opposite is true: he has put things in their natural position, under the new conditions that have arisen.

What we have before our eyes is a historic shift in inter-imperialist relations and a commitment to a new division of the world among the great powers.

Interests of European imperialism

This is the context in which the European bourgeoisie has sounded the clarion call to rearm. It must fill the vacuum left by US military spending and defend its imperialist interests in the world with its own resources.

These are the interests that drive European billionaires and their servile governments to impose a doubling and tripling of military spending on their populations. In 2024 alone, defence spending in the EU totalled 326 billion euros, 30 percent more than in 2021. And their stated goal is to bring it to 800 billion euros (!) by 2028.

This arms expenditure may seem terrible, yes, terribly profitable. The European defence industry, almost entirely in private hands, increased its turnover by 28.5 percent, to 158.8 billion euros, between 2021 and 2023. European military exports reached 57.4 billion euros in 2023, 12.6 percent more than in 2022. And these figures will have increased in the last year.

During Sánchez's administrations, 'official' military spending increased by 48.2 percent, reaching 12 billion euros in 2023 / Image: Fair use

The Spanish government has not been slow to join this militaristic orgy. During Sánchez’s administrations, ‘official’ military spending increased by 48.2 percent, reaching 12.3 billion euros in 2023. But the total unofficial spending, disguised in other items, is calculated for the same year as 27.6 billion euros, or 2.17 percent of GDP. And now Sánchez promises to raise the ‘official’ figure to 36.6 billion by 2029, which means that the ‘unofficial’ figure could climb to nearly 50 billion euros. How much money could that divert from building housing, schools, health centres, and infrastructure to prevent, for example, natural disasters caused by climate change?

Not in our name

Let's ask a simple and apparently naïve question: why is this exorbitant military spending and the maintenance of expensive armies necessary? 

We are told that there are external threats, especially from Russia, against which we must defend ourselves. But this is nonsense. Why would Russia need to wage war on Europe? Russia has no territorial or economic ambitions in Europe, beyond securing its eastern border in what was the former Soviet sphere of influence. Such a war would not be a walk in the park for the Russian army, even in the current situation, and would crudely pose a nuclear conflict that would not benefit any of the contenders. Russia already possesses enough territory, being the largest country in the world. It lacks a powerful export industry of capital and consumer goods that could threaten the European market, nor does it need relevant raw materials, as it is one of the world's main producers. 

In reality, both the Russian and European economies need and complement each other. The rupture of economic relations due to the war in Ukraine, depriving Europe of cheap Russian gas, is the cause of the increase in costs and the loss of competitiveness of European – and particularly German – industry, which had used this gas as its main source of energy. In fact, European support for the war in Ukraine, under pressure from the US, has damaged its interests. 

Russia's objective in this war was to prevent Ukraine from joining NATO and becoming a beachhead for Western imperialism on its borders. It did not and does not have any other interests in the war. And even if European imperialism eventually needs these instruments of destruction and barbarism to contain Russia's possible appetites in Eastern Europe, this will not be in the interest of the European working class but in the interests of the multimillion-dollar business of European multinationals in these territories.

This aggressive rearmament policy is not so much aimed at ‘our’ defence at home, but at defending the interests of European multinationals outside of Europe. Yes, the idyllic, civilised, democratic and progressive Europe is also a union of aggressive imperialist powers like its counterparts in the USA, China and Russia. The interests of European imperialism extend across Eastern Europe, Africa, the Middle East, Latin America and parts of Asia, for access to sources of raw materials, to establish free trade corridors, and to export goods and capital. It needs a powerful armed force to defend these interests with threats or force in all these parts of the world.

For years we have been told that there is no money for pensions, health or housing. But it has taken them less than two weeks to find hundreds of billions of euros for war! / Image: Wikimedia Commons

What we want to emphasise is that this enormous expenditure is being considered at a time when public debt in the EU is already considerable, with countries such as Belgium, France, Spain, Italy, Portugal and Greece having public debts that exceed 100 percent of their GDP. Clearly, in order to obtain these 800 billion euros per year for rearmament, there will have to be sharp cuts in public spending on pensions, health, education, housing, unemployment and infrastructure.

For years we have been told that there is no money for pensions, health or housing. But it has taken them less than two weeks to find hundreds of billions of euros for war! 

Even here there is disagreement. Germany and the Netherlands say each country should raise the money out of their own resources, and they oppose the proposal by Spain and France that part of that money be raised by subscribing to a common European debt; that is, that Germany and other rich countries pay part of the bill for other countries.

In any case, however the politicians decide to do it, the European working class is going to be asked to pay the bill with cuts, austerity and more inflation. They will experience a worsening of their standard of living in order to satisfy the bloodthirsty interests of big capital. All of this will be accompanied by an unbearable militaristic atmosphere, a brutal campaign to demonise anything Russian or Chinese, labelling those of us who denounce militarism and capitalism as ‘Putin's agents’, and new attacks on democratic rights. We cannot allow it.

A declaration of war... on the working class of Europe

What we have before us is, yes, a declaration of war, but not against foreign powers: it is a social war against the working class. On this front, the social democrats and conservatives are aligned with the far right, which will ultimately be discredited as just another imperialist agent. Against all of them, we must wage class war.

In the Spanish state, as expected, the PSOE (Spanish Socialist Workers' Party) has joined this rearmament campaign together with its national bourgeoisie. Others, such as Sumar, are trying to avoid the issue without taking a clear position, whereas others such as IU (United Left) are opposing the increase in military spending with pacifist positions sweetened with pathetic appeals to international imperialist organisations. For its part, Podemos merely calls for Spain to leave NATO and for the closure of US bases here. 

An extreme case of cretinism and adaptation to European imperialism is that of the leaders of the Spanish Communist Party (PCE), who criticise Trump for breaking off relations with the EU and not “abiding by international norms”, and defend “multilateralism” (that is, the coexistence of several imperialist powers), while proposing as the only solution an International Peace Conference, convened by who knows who.

No force on the reformist left questions the source of this militarism, which is none other than the capitalist system and its offspring, imperialism.

We have to expose the class interests at stake, point the finger at the rich and the imperialists and direct our indignation and anger towards fighting for a system and a society that offers an alternative to capitalism / Image: RCI

With capitalism in its death throes, which threatens to drag humanity into barbarism and desolation, with economic crisis, climate crisis, wars, massacres and endless injustices, it is time to rise up against this crazy and irrational system. The broadest possible united front against war and militarism is needed, with mass mobilisations and anti-capitalist slogans. We have to expose the class interests at stake, point the finger at the rich and the imperialists and direct our indignation and anger towards fighting for a system and a society that offers an alternative to capitalism. 

For revolutionary communists, this society and system is none other than international socialism, which would mean the working class taking power, expropriating the billionaires, organising the economy in the interests of the majority, and sweeping away national borders, the seedbed of chauvinism and hatred between peoples.

Our slogans should be:

– Our main enemy is at home: the European bourgeoisie and its agents in government

– No to military spending. Books, not bombs! Housing, not tanks!

– Expropriate the war industry, without compensation and under workers' control, and use it for social purposes.

– No to NATO, American bases out of Spain

– Peace between peoples, war on the billionaires!