Proletarians “On the Home Front”!
Comrades!
In many parts of the world, right now the capitalism is once again kicking off its inherent war machine to slaughter thousands upon thousands of proletarians. They are being relentlessly bombed and shelled; deliberately starved and deprived of water; forced to shoot, stab or poison each other with gas in the trenches, raped, tortured and mutilated…
When our class is confronted with this carnage, this horrific intensification of inhumanity of the capitalist society its only reaction is to refuse to submit to it! This is coming from our guts and at the same time it is an expression of our historical class interests.
Because of that soon after the war in Ukraine started, the so-called “incidents” started popping up on both sides of the front. Soldiers of both armies have been increasingly trying to avoid being drafted and sent to the front. They hide when they can and if they are forced into the military units, they try to escape and leave their positions at first opportunity. It went so far, that the Ukrainian generals complain about “total disintegration of the army discipline”. Same thing is happening, even though on smaller scale unfortunately, in other inter-bourgeois conflicts in the Middle East, Sudan and elsewhere. Both in Ukraine and in Russia army officers and military recruiters have been attacked by their “own” troops.
But what can we as proles living in the “peaceful” territories of “the home front”, do to practically support the struggle of our class brothers in uniform revolting against the capitalist war and practically connect it with our own struggles? Even if we are lucky to live far away enough from the “kill zone” that we do not suffer from bombings, rockets, military occupation or a presence of roaming bands of “special unit” cut-throats?
Our lives are still impacted daily by cuts in “social spending”, worsening of working conditions and intensification of exploitation, increase in prices of housing, food, energies and other means of survival, increased social control and repression and overall militarization of society.
This of course is nothing new, we experience this misery in times of capitalist “peace” as well and we struggle against it all the same. But during the war or intensive preparations for the war, Capital and its State need to concentrate increasing part of the production into so-called “war economy”. In other words, to rapidly produce weapons, ammo and military vehicles, fuel, food rations, etc. only to just as rapidly spend them in the process of mass killing of proletarians – i.e. US! And because each State has to do it faster and more massively than the “enemy”, this creates an immense pressure to make us work always harder, longer hours, with less protection and so on. At the same time the State has to double down on propaganda of the nation and sanctity of “the Motherland”, “democracy” and “freedom” in order to convince us to sacrifice ourselves for the interests of Capital which can never be our own.
The first answer to the question of what to do therefore is: to revolt against our own exploitation! Through strikes, occupations, blockades and sabotage of highways and railways, looting of goods as well as their redistribution among our class and so on during war time we attack the production, valorization and reproduction of Capital needed for the war efforts. But also, by claiming our class interests in opposition to the interests of the ruling class we subvert their fairy-tale of “national unity”! Our class enemies will also have to send more cops and soldiers to try to repress our struggles – and those will be missing for hunt on deserters and refugees, for enforcing mobilization, for guarding the borders… and their loyalty to the State is not given. After all, mutinies in Russian army in February 1917 were sparked when the soldiers were given a command by their officers to repress striking workers in Petrograd!
To make our attack on the war machine direct and efficient we need to focus our subversive activity on several fields:
Disruption of military infrastructure like ammunition warehouses, railroads, ports, airports and roads used to deliver troops and the military material to the fronts.
We can take inspiration from our proletarian brothers and sisters from collectives sabotaging the railways in Belarus and Russia since the beginning of the war to stop the delivery of military material to the front.
Also, from port workers in Genoa and Trieste in Italy and in Piraeus in Greece blocking the shipment of weapons and munitions to Ukraine, Israel or for American bombing of Yemen.
Disruption of military recruitment, draft and “busification” of enlisted men to the front. Both in Ukraine (Zakarpattia and others) and in Russia (Dagestan and others), pigs and military patrols coming to arrest the enlisted men are being confronted by their angry relatives and friends.
If we live in countries further from the front, the State so far uses either some sort of “voluntary” recruitment tactics, and nationalist manipulation like the patriotic education programs that are being run for example in France or in Poland or projects of compulsory military service. If we look for inspiration of what to do about it, let’s point out the long tradition of protests and riots against military recruiters and “military career advisers” in American universities, going back to the so-called wars in Vietnam, the Persian Gulf up to the recent one in Gaza.
Why should military recruiters, nationalist propagandists, or those good citizens that snitch for the State and denounce the anti-militaristic class resistance – those that force us to sacrifice ourselves for the “good of the nation” – be allowed to live their lives in peace and safety? Let’s deal with them as our class movement has always dealt with scabs and strikebreakers! Snitches get stitches!
Helping the deserters to escape, hide them and smuggle them across the borders, but also organize our struggle together with them! There already exist networks both in Russia and Ukraine that help soldiers escape from the army and we need to practically connect them with our own networks of struggle. This means secure contacts, secure phones, safe houses, fund collections…
History of class struggle shows us that the only way how we can truly oppose the capitalist war, not in favor of continuation of our misery in capitalist peace, but for destruction of the society of misery and exploitation altogether, and therefore to end all wars, is when the revolt of proletarians on the front-lines and struggle of those on the “home front” practically unite!
Let us recall the experience of the proletarians in Iraq during the so-called First Gulf war of 1991, when army deserters, many of them keeping their weapons, have congregated both in the marshes in the south and the mountains in the north where they organized together with the militant workers the insurrection against the State!
When faced with a global capitalist catastrophe, the revolution is our only perspective!
Let’s turn our weapons against “our own” exploiters and against “our own” generals!
Let’s struggle together against the capitalist war, against the capitalist peace!
Let’s turn the capitalist war into a global class insurrection for communism!