NO SERIOUS person, certainly no socialist, would disagree that the first world war was an inter-imperialist conflict between “great powers” in pursuit of markets, resources, and hegemony.  

Isn’t hindsight a wonderful thing. At the time, one hundred and nine years ago today, the majority of socialists, trade union leaders and prominent “Marxists” abandoned international class solidarity, capitulated to war fever, embraced national chauvinism, effectively endorsing the industrialised slaughter of millions of workers of all combatant nations.

Socialists who opposed the war and exposed its real cause — imperialist profiteering — were marginalised and victimised.  In Britain, John MacLean and other socialists were imprisoned under the Defence of the Realm Act.  

Exiled in Switzerland Lenin analysed the very nature of war in modern capitalist society in his Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism, and insisted that “unless this is studied, it will be impossible to understand and appraise modern war and modern politics,” an exhortation as urgent now as then.  

He argued that finance capital, the merger of bank and industrial capital, creates financial oligarchies which, along with the export of capital, leads to the creation of monopolies — the decisive factor in economic life — and to the division of the world into territories dominated by a “handful of ‘advanced’ countries” ie, the strongest capitalist powers.  

The monopolies, or big corporations, do not just dominate economic life, nor do they merely influence government and state policy and political priorities — they determine and direct them in their own interests, profit-making. Competitors must be defeated, by military means if necessary. 

Lenin and MacLean were slandered as “pro-German.” “Putin apologist” is the slur spat at anyone daring to question the lie that the Ukraine war is a conflict of “goodies” versus “baddies.” 

Regardless of certain specific characteristics (for example that it is a proxy war waged mainly on behalf of US imperialism), the principal cause of the conflict is precisely the same as in the first world war — competition between competing imperialist blocs for resources, markets, and power. 

Ukraine is ranked fourth globally in terms of resources with a potential assessed value of £7.5 trillion, much of it in the disputed Russian-speaking Donbass region. US corporations Blackrock and Monsanto are hoovering up Ukrainian assets in expectation of a massive profiteering bonanza in “reconstruction” that, like the Marshall Plan after World War II, is aimed at reasserting US economic and political hegemony in Europe and ensuring economic and political connections between the EU, principally Germany, and Russia are broken; a central aim of the US in its strategy to “extend and weaken” the latter.    

Following the collapse of the Soviet Union the US refused Russia’s plea to join their “club,” treated it as an enemy and competitor to be dominated and kept in its place, rather than a partner and potential ally against an emergent China.  

This strategy, an act of hubris on behalf of US capital intoxicated by “end of history” nonsense and the aggressive expansion of Nato, drove nationalist sentiment amongst Russia’s new capitalist elite. 

The claim Russia’s invasion was “unprovoked” is not credible, but it was unjustified, driven as it was in the interests of its own big corporations in order to secure dominance in its own region.  

The four blocs involved in Ukraine, the US, EU, Russia and China are capitalist competitors on a global basis, all at differing stages of development and with different interests.  

Until recently Russia was a regional power, albeit one with nuclear weapons, now it seeks, as does China, to extend its influence in Asia and Africa and with cynical plausibility posing as alternatives to “Western colonialism,” just as the West sells its interests as “defending democracy” and its “rules-based order.”  

The Ukraine war is only one conflict in this interconnected struggle — recent coups in both Pakistan and Niger are driven by such competing interests. 

War is a class issue: it breeds reaction and repression, debate must be suppressed, and its real causes hidden at all costs from the working class, who always pay the highest price. 

A failure or refusal on behalf of workers’ leaders to define and expose its real nature in capitalist society and to adopt a firm independent class position in opposition to warmongering has led to repeated disasters for workers nationally and internationally.   

Most trade unions leaderships in Britain and elsewhere in the West have, to a greater or lesser extent, capitulated to the warmonger’s propaganda, either openly cheerleading for the corrupt, repressive Zelensky regime and Ukrainian victory, or obdurately refusing to acknowledge the role played by the West in causing this conflict. Of considerably less significance are those isolated voices clinging to the fantasy a Russian victory would be a blow against “imperialism.” In reality a “victory” for either side would be a victory for reaction.  

Anti-war voices in the Labour Party have been silenced, an expression of the type of authoritarianism that will characterise a Starmer-led Labour government, which will offer unconditional support for US imperialism along with an absolute commitment to corporate interests through cuts and privatisation.  

Support for increased defence spending by Labour and even some union leaders at the expense of services workers desperately need is a warning of the depths war-driven reaction can reach.   

While criticism of Russian oligarchs is loud and shrill barely a word is heard about the western and Ukrainian oligarchs who, like the “enemy,” are testing their weapons of destruction and raking in the profits. Whatever their country of origin all oligarchs are our class enemies — not our fellow workers.      

Capitalism has entered a period of multiple crises: economic, political, and social which, including climate change, it is incapable of resolving.  

The Ukraine war is not a battle for “democracy over tyranny,” any more than the first world war was — it is a particularly brutal manifestation of capitalist competition that is likely to intensify in a cycle of destructive conflicts with unimaginably catastrophic consequences for humanity, even the threat of nuclear annihilation. Unless it is opposed by united working-class solidarity.

Although propaganda around events in Ukraine has been more intense than at any time in recent history workers in Britain, while expressing sympathy and solidarity with the Ukrainian people, are deeply sceptical about the motives of their own ruling class — memories of Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan are still fresh.  

In the US workers are increasingly demanding to know why billions can be sent in aid to Ukraine while conditions at home are so bad. And German workers did manage to notice the destruction of Nord Stream by their “allies,” even if their politicians pretend not to.  

In building opposition to capitalist barbarism, the starting point for socialists must be an insistence above all else on an independent class position including, in fact especially, on the question of building anti-war solidarity, linking it inextricably to our demand for a socialist transformation of society. 

Although 40 years of neoliberal reaction has resulted in the relative weakness of socialist and Marxist ideas, they have never been more important in providing an understanding of the processes unfolding as capitalism drags the working class into one disaster after another, including the increasing threat of war.  

More that, they offer a serious and credible response to the concerns of workers and can and will take root amongst activists and workers as trust in the ruling elites’ withers and a desire for change grows as economic, political, and social crises intensify.