Against Bourgeois Pacifism.

• Author: Rawluk, Wade

The pacifism of the bourgeois pacifist is the illusion behind which the violence of the bourgeoisie stands. Yet the bourgeois pacifist cannot see this violence. The conscious action of the libertarian socialist is the force which smashes this illusion and allows the people to overcome the violence which the state and capital generate through their very existence. The bourgeois pacifist believes that all conflict can be ended through moral force and forms of nonviolent activism that do not go beyond the bounds set by capitalist norms. When the bourgeois pacifist opposes the state one of three strategies is usually chosen. In the first strategy the bourgeois pacifist accepts the bourgeois state and only wishes to make it obey his moral norms. Such a quest is quixotic since it does not understand that the capitalist state uses violence to promote the interests of the ruling class. The second strategy involves the attempt to abolish the capitalist state without arming the working class. No matter how successful s uch nonviolent tactics may be at first, if people are not ready to defend themselves by force of arms the armed power of the capitalist class will defeat them before or after a postcapitalist order is established. The third strategy involves establishing communities whose social relations are noncapitalist without challenging the existence of the state. No matter how attractive the new order is, the state will ultimately have power over these unarmed communities and as a result these utopian communities will not be able to displace the power of the capitalist state.

But what if the bourgeois pacifists win power by becoming part of the capitalist state structure? In such a case the use of the bourgeois electoral system is not one in which the running of candidates enables one to build worker, community and armed forces councils as an alternative libertarian socialist government. One begins to use the capitalist state structures as a means to eliminate imperialist war. Such reformism is a crossing of class lines for any libertarian socialist since it involves an acceptance of the capitalist state as a morally good end in itself, not just a means. The abolishment of the state ceases to be a practical end and the internal logic of capital begins to unconsciously guide the hands of such revisionist "Greens."

Often there will be some pacifists who seek to abolish imperialist war by abolishing imperialist armies, without abolishing the imperialist state. When all the armies are abolished an international "police force" would keep violence from erupting again. But who, may we ask, is to be this police force? NATO intervenes in the Balkans in the name of peace. NATO wishes to expand its mission as a peacekeeping and anti-terrorist force beyond...