Just Struggle for a Just Peace!

Statement on the Occassion of International Peace Day

The International League of Peoples’ Struggle marks another International Peace Day with grave trepidation at the ever-growing threat of all-out world war, with indignant rage at the unrelenting attacks directed against the people and their organized movements, and with rising hope at the growth of the people’s strength and will to fight every day.

On this day, the ILPS projects a very different conception of peace than the lackluster and pacifying words touted by the United Nations. Every September 21st, UN statements on International Peace Day call on the people of the world to merely reflect on the state of affairs, imagine a day sometime in the abstract far future where conflict does not exist, and lay down their arms for a day in the hopes that this will inspire the war makers to stand down. Rather than presenting any longterm solution that would lead to the end of war and conflict around the world, these statements have the opposite effect, shielding the instigators of conflict and giving them a free hand to continue stoking war, occupation, theft, and genocide with no end in sight.

How should anti-imperialists approach the problem of war and the question of just peace? Peace is not merely the temporary absence of conflict, nor is war merely the senseless fighting of even-handed and equally-at-fault sides. Today’s conflicts require us to look at the root causes of war so as to identify a genuine path away from the catastrophic precipice the world is sitting on.

War and militarism are on the destructive rise.  The starkest example of this is the unrelenting genocide of the Palestinian people by the fanatical, fascist US-Zionist regime that has persisted for nearly a year. Gaza has endured the complete destruction of its infrastructure and health system while the people shelter in what amounts to an open killing field for Zionist fighter jets, tanks, and snipers, while health workers, journalists, and others are tortured in prisons and starved amongst the ruins of their homes. The West Bank is under a campaign of mass arrests and bloodshed against mostly orphaned youth. For nearly a year the genocide has continued and for nearly a year the US-led gang of international institutions has condemned the Palestinian resistance for taking up arms against one of the most indiscriminately racist and well-armed occupying powers of the modern age. The US and other rulers of the world speak of “peace” while doing their utmost to shame resistance fighters even while arming the occupier itself.

It is not only in Palestine that militarism is growing in force. In the same region, Lebanon, Syria, Iran, Iraq, and Yemen have been the targets of bombings and political assassinations; the heinous digital attack on a mass population in Lebanon is testimony to the ruthless nature of the imperialist zionist enemy. The war in Ukraine continues unabated, with Russians fighting on Ukrainian soil and Ukrainians fighting on Russian soil, and military alliances like NATO creeping ever closer to getting their troops directly involved. The Indo-Pacific has seen more new bases and military agreements constructed than at any time since the end of World War 2, and imperialist-backed puppet governments turning the guns on their own people in Korea, the Philippines, India, Indonesia and occupied West Papua, Thailand, Burma, and many others. People in African countries such as Kenya and Nigeria face brutal crackdowns for merely rallying for food and an end to IMF-instigated inflation, while countries that shake off their puppet rulers such as Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger are maligned as “tyrannical”. In Latin America and the Caribbean, Haiti faces military invasion as the way to bring “peace” to a poverty-stricken people, US Presidential candidates toy with the idea of invading Mexico and Venezuela, and the rulers of debt-stricken Argentina attempt to orchestrate the country becoming the first South American member of NATO.

How should the people respond? What truly constitutes peace? As an anti-imperialist alliance, the ILPS approaches this question with an anti-imperialist answer. Imperialism is a system with multiple, irreconcilable contradictions. We must recognize how each of these will inevitably lead to war until imperialism itself is abolished.

One contradiction existing within imperialism is between the workers and the monopoly capitalist ruling class. The latter always seeks to maximize its profit, and this will always be by laying claim to the labor power of workers selling it to them in order to survive. One has only to look at skyrocketing inflation, unemployment, food shortages, and forced migration to see the result of this unequal relationship. As long as this small capitalist ruling class keeps its power over the economy and state machinery away from the majority of workers, this chaotic, profit-driven system will always lead to global instability.

Another contradiction of imperialism is that between oppressed nations and peoples on one hand and the imperialist countries on the other. The imperialist ruling class is never satisfied with exploiting the labor of just the workers within its own countries.  Its endless drive for profit pushes it to violently expand. In this way, conflict will always be instigated by imperialist states to justify intervention, colonial and semi-colonial oppression to “keep the peace” of their class interests over the lives and land of other nations. National liberation movements therefore have the same stake in the anti-capitalist struggle of the workers, and vice versa, for a new system of dignified livelihood, collective empowerment and peace.

Nations will never take this blatant oppression lying down forever, and so another inherent contradiction of imperialism is that between the imperialist states and those asserting their national independence from foreign aggression. Since these countries are actively pushing back against unilaterally imposed sanctions, attempted coups, and other destabilization machinations of the imperialists, both the workers of the world and oppressed nations striving for liberation can find a friend in these states keeping imperialism at bay.

Finally, given the anarchic nature of the capitalist drive for accumulation and profit, the most powerful imperialists will always look to seize the shackled land, resources, markets and labor power from the hands of their competitors for their own use. This quest to redivide the world and win the spoils of war has the potential to turn regional wars of aggression into full-blown inter-imperialist world war should their class interests push the imperialists to their most savage level of desperation. This fact alone puts the workers, oppressed nations, and independent countries of the world into a natural united front for peace against genocide and possible nuclear annihilation.

The ILPS seeks to build this united front among peoples’ organizations fighting for national liberation and an end to the war-ridden capitalism that has made any attempt at lasting peace unattainable. Capitalism and imperialism are the root causes of war and conflict.  It is therefore not only right to fight against the global system of imperialism and all forms of local reaction, it is just. On this International Peace Day, the ILPS declares wholeheartedly that just peace can only be attained through a just struggle for national and social liberation. Far from merely imagining this just and lasting peace, as the UN statements would have us do every year, the ILPS is enjoining organizations around the world in the direct fight to realize it through sustained livelihood, national industry serving people’s needs, environmental balance, and self-determination in the hands of the people’s sovereignty. Only through the just struggle against those crushing these aspirations of the people will we achieve this just peace!

Signed,

Len Cooper, ILPS Chairperson