Those who think the impending full scale world war is about securing freedom or oil for the masses of Americans and Middle Easterners alike are ignoring the crisis which faces the human race due to global capitalism.

On the one hand, oil prices have skyrocketed while the New York Times reports stockpiles of oil, proving there is no direct relationship between availability and price.

Bush’s drive for world domination through gaining control over the resources necessary to run capitalism comes in direct contradiction to the concerns of the workers who can’t afford to drive to work anymore, not to mention those lucky enough to hold jobs.

Unemployment rates are soaring as one-fifth of this country’s states face recession, and huge industries pack up and move to third world countries where labor and land can be exploited cheaply.

The official figure of 5.7 percent overall unemployment doesn’t even represent many immigrants, homeless and youth who are not counted, nor are those who are forced to work only part-time jobs for their full time needs.

The figures are higher for many, and for some inner-city black youth the figures reach 80 to 90 percent! Bush’s solution to this crisis is to punish us into a world war during which we are expected to accept tens of thousands of casualities!

Unemployment is not a coincidence to capitalism. Karl Marx wrote more than 100 years ago that the laws of capital result in the domination of dead over living labor, the accumulation of bigger and bigger machines which require fewer and fewer workers to run them.

The resulting “unemployed army” as Marx called it, would be the “gravediggers of capitalism.”

Since World War I, capitalists have been dealing with this unemployed army by sending them off to be killed in wars.

Bush would rather see thousands of youth die than allow a new truly human society to emerge, which it has been trying to do in Burma, China, Korea, Africa, Central and Latin America, the Middle East, Watts L.A., Miami and Chicago…

The solution to this war cannot come from falling behind the U.N. or any state power or representative.

The crisis we face demands that our anti-war activities be connected with the struggles of the masses of workers, blacks and other minorities, women and youth throughout the world against the many forms of capitalism and for a world where human creativity is directed toward human need instead of human domination.

Julia D. Stege

Marxist Humanist Forum