An anatomy of war
29 Oct 2023 - 7:17
By Costas Lambos
claslessdemocracy@gmail.com,
War is the father of everything and the king of all things, which makes some of them gods and some men, that is, some of them makes some free and others slaves.
Heraclitus
War is the state of armed conflict between two or more rival national/state power entities and coalitions for the purpose of subduing the opponent(s). In other words, the armed imposition of the power of the victor over the vanquished. In essence, war is nothing but the violent conflict between powers for the redistribution of power over geographical, wealth, economic, strategic and social dimensions through conquest. War is an act of power conquest, expansion and enslavement that was completed as a practical policy with the emergence of the capitalist mode of production in the form of colonialism, imperialism and globalisation. Since then, imperialist wars became the norm and peace between belligerents, i.e. imperialist peace, the exception, the interlude in preparation for the next wars.
Heraclitus defined war as 'the father and king of everything'[1]. By replacing the word father and/or king with the word power, the two basic concepts that symbolize authority, we understand how consciously and deliberately those who deify war and try to present it both as the generator and creator of everything are misleading, when in fact it has been, throughout the course of human history, the destroyer of everything, making the few rulers 'free' and the many subjugated slaves. On the contrary, defensive wars of national liberation, as well as social revolutions, differ from the classical war of conquest and enslavement, because they seek the exact opposite result, namely, liberation from violent occupation and slavery, and contribute creatively to the progress of societies and humanity. Paleoanthropology, archaeology, history and other related sciences teach us that, during the millions of years of egalitarian societies that ensured the survival of the human species, any conflicts resulted in the merging and peaceful coexistence of races and human groups. They also teach us that organized conquering and destructive wars appeared simultaneously with the emergence of de jure individual patriarchal ownership of land and people, of monogamous, but only on the part of the mother, family, organized authoritarian state and organized religions. Since then, patriarchal private property is expressed as patriarchal power and transformed into class state power which is identified with conquering war, as a way of survival of power and enrichment, instead of organizing the production of necessary goods. Thus human history becomes the history of wars with the interludes of 'peace' for reconstruction and the organisation of new wars, until we reach the 20th century with the two great inhuman and destructive world wars.
The Third, modern, World War III between the would-be rulers of humanity is being waged, in installments and by proxies, as we all experience it daily as a show through the brainwashers, resulting in great confusion as to who is on the right side of history and who is not. However, history has already conclusively established that peoples, working societies, the forces of labour, science and civilisation, whether as 'warriors' or as citizens, are always on the 'wrong side of history', while the economically powerful, the obscurantists and the rulers are on the 'right' side.
Loony parrots, loquacious 'experts', war-mongers or so-called 'peace-lovers' and crisis analysts further obfuscate the issue because they intervene in the debate either as spokesmen for ideologies, or as direct or indirect employees of the global conglomerate producing and trading weapons, defence and armament systems, acting in their own way as dealers in war. The verbose and allegedly scientific analyses are limited to a superficial approach to the facts and situations of war, with the result that the causes and consequences of war are concealed, which, as a rule, result in the vulgar notion that it is human nature that is to blame for wars, and not the excesses of the capitalist mode of production and the unequal distribution of wealth. War is a policy of interests.
The reality is that war, as Clausewitz taught us, is nothing more than the 'continuation of (peaceful) politics by other means', which ends in 'war by other means', in the form of a timeless vicious circle, which, in repeated historical cycles, reproduces itself by devouring humanity and its civilisation. Ultimately, however, both war and peace between belligerents are nothing but a violent economic operation subject to the laws of cost-benefit analysis in which the winner(s) take all and the loser(s) lose everything, including their identity and freedoms, to end up as inmates of 'humanitarian' handouts and vassals of the 'development aid' of the victors.
In order to understand the essence of the power that suffers from war-madness, precisely because it is in incurable insecurity and considers that its survival depends on the subjugation or even the disappearance of all other powers, we must identify its cause. Warlike power does not stem from human nature, as some capitalist ideologues claim, who see war as a universal inherited natural aspect of human nature. On the contrary, human nature is a social systemic, not a transcendent physical, quantity that is an imprint of the particular social system in which each person is born and lives. No human being who is born unable to survive on his own and survives thanks to the care of his parents and his society has no reason to be conflictual, because he understands that only in conditions of peaceful coexistence and cooperation can he survive, develop and be happy. In conclusion, warlike power derives exclusively from the right of a minority to exercise the right of private property over the means of production and consequently over the way in which the socially produced wealth is distributed, which results in power over the social whole and over the wealth-producing resources of the society in question and of humanity as a whole. The conclusion that ultimately emerges is that war is nothing but the violent conflict mainly between large private property in the form of class state powers aimed at reproducing and perpetuating economic and social inequalities.
Now, why all those who talk and analyse war as a cause are bypassing and obscuring the basic cause of war, which is private property, does not require one to be a philosopher to understand it, as long as one has the simple logic of things and of course the courage to express it. And this despite and against the authoritarian fear that in many ways permeates our daily life, even in the form of pressure to take a stand for one war or another, rather than condemning war as a systemic phenomenon and consequently the system that generates and nourishes inhuman and destructive imperialist wars and reconstitutes itself for new ones, with imperialist peace as a respite.
In this vicious circle of capital, what is at stake is not a certain imperialist peace, but the abolition of the main and fundamental cause of all wars. This was the aim of the establishment of the EEC which evolved into the European Union, the most important thing that has happened in history so far, which is waiting to be completed. Neo-Germanism slowed down the evolution of the EU , through the divergence, instead of the economic and social convergence of its member states into United States of Europe. The result of this not at all accidental development was to give neo-Americanism the opportunity to reconstitute itself, after the voluntary collapse of the Soviet Bloc, into an aspiring world hegemon with China and Russia as its main rivals, which instead of taking a step forward towards direct/classical democracy 'returned peacefully' from state monopoly capitalism to the market capitalism of oligarchies and authoritarianism. Thus we have arrived at capitalist barbarism which is increasingly taking the form of a devastating nuclear conflict, even a biological war between East and West, which will decimate the world population and return humanity to primitive conditions.
The first and main victim of this conflict is the European Union and the other peoples of the world, who are waiting for the European Union to become aware of its historic mission, to formulate its European identity and to take the next step towards a post-capitalist European society. THE EU, despite the weaknesses and reactionary anchors of its leading group, which is the greatest economic, social and cultural power on the planet, could, by freeing itself from the chariot of Americanism, become the moral force that would open wide the way to an anti-capitalist transcendence in the form of a global peaceful revolution that would lead all humanity to a better world, which today, in the 21st century more than ever before is necessary, possible and inevitable.
But since the leaderships of the countries/members of the European Union are nothing but the donor powers of the economic oligarchies, this development is not their choice, because their narrow economic interests are intertwined with those of American hegemonism. That is why history will sleep until the forces of labour, science and civilisation understand that the further progress of Europe and of humanity as a whole, is identified with their own awakening and their movement from the position of the object of the power of capital that consumes the ideological garbage of neoliberalism, to the position of the subject of history that will produce and implement Politics for Man, his society and his civilization and not for profit and war.
The abolition of war, therefore, cannot be achieved through our fanaticism, nor through papal prayers and the excommunications of obscurantist priesthoods, but through the abolition of private property over the means of production, which will change the philosophy and architecture of the constitution of societies towards direct democratic/class societies from the local to the universal level. Science and modern technology have formed all those necessary conditions for the passage to the civilization of social equality and peaceful coexistence of all the peoples of the planet, as long as we liberate science and technology from capital, before it finally destroys the earth's biosphere.
If wars are not accidental, nor 'God-given' events, but planned, by capital, the powers that be and their political servants, destructive actions designed to perpetuate the social inequalities that make a few their masters and the many their slaves. Then the abolition of wars cannot be accidental, but a conscious and planned affair of the forces of labour, science and civilisation, starting from their final and irrevocable decision to abolish private property over the means of production and to organise their lives on the principle of proportional social equality, without masters and slaves. All the rest is intellectual aggrandizement...
https://biblionet.gr/%CF%80%CF%81%CE%BF%CF%83%CF%89%CF%80%CE%BF/?personid=22283,
[1] Heraclitus, On Nature, verse h.
https://www.triklopodia.gr/%ce%bc%ce%b9%ce%b1-%ce%b1%ce%bd%ce%b1%cf%84%ce%bf%ce%bc%ce%af%ce%b1-%cf%84%ce%bf%cf%85-%cf%80%ce%bf%ce%bb%ce%ad%ce%bc%ce%bf%cf%85/
