World War One centenary - empires slaughter their working class

Vanguard April 2014 p. 5

by Max O

The Australian government, like most other Western nations, will commemorate the First World War slaughter, reasoning as the Australian War Memorial states: " The First World War touched the lives of nearly every Australian and the impacts are still prevalent today. For these reasons it is essential to commemorate, remember, and learn from those who sacrificed their lives during those four years, 1914 – 1918." The unremitting message of this and past Anzac Day commemorations is the propaganda about our soldiers sacrificial and selfless behaviour, their contempt for danger and “no risk is too great” attitude.

Australians learning about Australia's escapades in war are conditioned into believing that whilst war is hell, it is an inspirational undertaking; there is the ugly romanticisation of Australian soldiers in battle who willingly become cannon-fodder heroes.  But why did they go to war? Little is said about this from official sources, other than our soldiers fought 'to defend our way of life' and 'democracy'.

The federal government will spend $325 to mark the World War One (WW1) commemoration. Christopher Pyne, federal education minister, wants the new national history curriculum to focus students’ attention on our nation's adventure at Gallipoli! The real reasons why Australia got involved with the 1914-18 war will be deliberately overlooked.

Imperial Carve-Up of the World

WW1 was the product of competing empires constructed across the globe that came out of the development of capitalism in Europe. This empire building saw the carve-up of Africa and Asia into colonies, led particularly by Britain and France.

For example in 1882, British military rule was established in Egypt to protect the Suez Canal Company's profits from its European imperialist adversaries. The Suez Canal provided a short route to Britain's jewel colony, India.

European powers who had conducted colonial protectionism, to prevent other rivals from entering their markets and resources, needed to reduce the contestability of their empires by reaching agreements amongst themselves. By 1884 the Berlin Conference was held to sanction the carve-up of Africa.

The scramble for Africa saw European control of the continent grow from 11% in the 1870's to 90% by 1900. The rivalry between European powers saw them laying claims on territories all over the globe. From the partitioning of China by all the European powers, the seizure of Africa by mainly Britain and France, Britain taking India, France Indochina, Holland the East Indies (Indonesia), the US took the Philippines and Cuba, to Japan occupying Taiwan and Japan.

Australia itself was the creation of empire rivalry, evolving from a British colony to a client state of Britain and eventually of the US. Similarly Papua New Guinea was colonised by Germany and Britain in 1884, Germany taking the northern half and Britain the southern half. British New Guinea was transferred to Australia in 1905 to conduct the exploitation of this territory on behalf of the British Empire. The Dutch lay claim to West Papua as part of the Dutch East Indies around 1825.

When Australia attacked the Germans near Rabaul in September 1914, the Australian military suffered their first casualties of WW1.

Imperialism is the outcome of monopolising capitals

As capitalist economies regularly underwent crises small enterprises either collapsed or were swallowed up by larger firms which coalesced into monopolising cartels, thus creating a concentration of industry. This concentration expanded even further where banks integrated with industrial (manufacture, mining, transport etc) capital to form what is called finance capital.

The creation of monopolies in different industries lead to their dominating influence within national economies. Their influence became so overwhelming they placed demands on their respective nation states to protect and expand their investments.

Economic competition that occurred between enterprises, which lead to the development of monopolising capitals within the nation state, progressed to competition between nations for territorial advantage and the capture of valuable resources and markets. The major capitalist powers through, "...a calculation of strength of the participants, their general economic, financial, military and other strength", as explain by Lenin and Bukharin, divided the world up amongst themselves.

This stage of capitalism, which Marxists call imperialism, saw European powers expand their control to over 80% of the world. Now that the planet was virtually divided up, the only way for imperialist countries to capture more territory (to gain access to markets and resources) was through re-division. This forced emerging imperialist powers to acquire new territory by military force, to achieve a re-division of the globe.

Germany in particular, came late to the empire race and there was very little territory left over for them to colonise and exploit. These powers backed up their empires by military strength and Germany, to catch-up, rapidly industrialised and militarised its economy.

Prior to WW1 alliances had formed around two major blocs. Britain, France and Russia had formed the Triple Entente and opposing them was Germany, the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Empires which created the Central Powers bloc.

Empire and profit not democracy

The Balkan Wars of 1912-13 was an expression of this bloc rivalry and saw the Ottoman Empire lose its hold in Europe and Austria-Hungary much weakened by an expanded Serbia. This raised tensions between the Big Powers, with Germany lining up behind Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Empires and Russia and France behind Serbia. The Balkans crisis was the precursor to WW1.

The 1914-18 war saw the working classes of the various warring nations sent off to die in battles for the purpose of empire and profit. Today the euphemism, 'In the national interest' is used to mask the imperialist and commercial interests of the ruling class when war is declared.

So it was in 1914, and democracy had nothing to do with the reasons for going to war. In fact Germany had more universal suffrage than Britain, where only men who either owned, leased or rented property had the vote and woman had no voting rights.

The Labour and Social Democratic parties of both blocs fell in line with big business and voted to go to war in support of their nation's empire.

At the beginning of WW1 the Australian Labor Prime Minister Fisher pledged that Australia would "...stand beside the mother country to help and defend to the last man and last shilling." This subservience to the British Empire was long standing and saw Australian troops sent off to fight for Britain in the Sudan (1885), the Boer War (1899-1902), and the Boxer Rebellion in China (1900).

WW1 deeply divided Australia, split the ALP and saw two conscription referendums lost. Enthusiasm for the war plummeted with high casualty rates, the return of war wounded and trauma victims. Many soldiers came back disillusioned and anti-war.

It shaped Australians in despair and bereavement and few at the time thought of it as forging, but rather gutting, the nation.