Back to Work

T Vijayendra

Is genocide just another mechanical work? An Israeli occupation soldier posted a video documenting himself shelling Gaza with heavy artillery after reigniting the genocidal war on the war-torn region. In a world of alienated labour, everything is work if it is paid.

It is a Marxist term describing conditions of work in a capitalist society. In this system the worker is alienated from his work because he doesn’t own the enterprise–work place, machinery, raw material, power etc. He merely sells his labour power–ability to do work–at a certain rate per hour/day/week/month. He has no other involvement–for example the product–it can be biscuit or bomb! Nor does he have any ethics-whether the product is good for society or for nature. He can be involved in the production of healthy foods or poisons.

Wars are special cases–they involve the worst crimes–that of killing another human being. So special inputs are given to justify the ‘work’. Two most common inputs have been ’racism’ and ‘nationalism’.

Because the ‘other’ person is different and poor therefore he is inferior. This is the basic logic of racism and has been used throughout the colonial era and today’s attitude towards lower castes and immigrants. It has been used to insult, hit, kill, loot, burn, mass lynching and genocide.

Apartheid, meaning “separateness” in Afrikaans, was a system of racial segregation and discrimination enforced by the white minority government in South Africa from 1948 until the early 1990s, leading to the oppression of non-white citizens. Today this term has acquired a general meaning and is used in connection with Israel’s policy towards Palestinians.

Ho Chi Minh was asked if he was a communist or nationalist. He replied ‘I am a patriot’. Patriotism means love for one’s people and land. Patriotic wars are to defend these. Many ‘national liberation wars’ fall in this category.

Nationalism assumes that my ‘nation’/country is more important than others and has a right to loot, wage wars or colonise. Soldiers and ordinary people are indoctrinated with this philosophy/attitude in almost all the countries–including the so-called communist countries. This is the most widely used input to soldiers in almost all the wars–except in ‘national liberation wars’. The latter should actually be called ‘patriotic wars’ to remove the confusion. These are a special class of soldiers who do not owe allegiance to any country. They sell their ‘labour’ to any side which pays them more. In that sense they do pure ‘alienated labour’.

There are also ‘mercenary’ arms dealers and arms manufacturers who sell arms to any one, often to both sides of the conflict. Today major capitalist economies have become war economies. They encourage, intervene and even start wars to support their business and economies. In fact today ‘war’ is the biggest business and all the major capitalist countries are involved in it–at an enormous cost to humanity.

So defeating capitalism is the most important task facing humanity. Down with capitalism.

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Frontier
Vol 57, No. 45, May 4 - 10, 2025