A Citizen Army?

Outgoing head of the British Army, General Sir Patrick Sanders, has called for a British “Citizen Army” to be created ready to fight against Russia, as the drive to World War III, continues apace, despite the bleating of social-imperialists that the Eastward drive of NATO, its encampments in Central Asia, direct military involvement in Ukraine, in the Middle East, and build up of forces in the Pacific, do not suggest any such development. Former Tory Defence Minister, Tobias Elwood, was more honest than them, when he stated openly “There's a 1939 feel to the world right now”. The statement by General Sanders, not to be confused with the better known Colonel Sanders, follows the statement from the top soldier, Paul Carney, who said last year, that British service families should prepare for their kids to fight and die in Ukraine. In fact, we know from the leaked US Defence Department papers that British soldiers already are actively engaged in Ukraine.

Whether the social-imperialists like it or not, the world is heading towards World War III, as an inter-imperialist global conflict, which, as with the previous two such conflicts, actually consists of a series of regional wars, and shifting alliances of states. The actions of the social-imperialists in giving Left cover for imperialism, on the basis of it either “defending national independence”, or opposing undemocratic forces, has facilitated the increasing drive to war, which, this time, as nuclear war, will spell the end of humanity itself.

The call by Sanders, amounts to a call for a return of conscription, but, in the event of any such war, that would be irrelevant, as no amount of soldiers, or conventional weapons will be sufficient, as each side is vaporised in a thermonuclear holocaust. What the call does do, is simply give the drive to war an additional twist of the ratchet, and to prepare the ground for working-class grunts to be sent, in the next few years, not to fight Russia, but to go to fight further proxy wars, in the Middle-East, and elsewhere, as NATO seeks to denude the conventional forces of China and Russia, whilst seeking, in the meantime, to provoke internal rebellions, and fragmentation.

So, what then should be Marxists attitude to the call for a “Citizen Army”? Given that, in Britain, the vast majority of citizens are workers, a citizen army, means, in reality, “a workers army”, just as it is workers that comprise the industrial army that produces all of the country's wealth. However, despite the fact of it being workers that form this industrial army, and produce this wealth, it is not workers that either control that production of wealth, or have control over its distribution once produced. Despite the fact that it is workers that produce the factories and machines, dig up the raw materials, manufacture the components, as well as teaching the next generation, ensuring their health and so on, and also are the collective owners of the vast majority of this “socialised capital”, it is, instead, only shareholders (lenders of money) to these companies that get to exercise control.

The fact that the collective owners of this socialised capital (workers) do not get to control their own property, whilst non-owners (share-owners) do, exposes the sham nature of bourgeois-democracy, and bourgeois property laws. That democracy forms the basis of the property laws and other laws, in the country, and its geared to ensuring that the ruling-class, the owners of all of that interest-bearing capital (coupon clippers as Marx and Engels called them), get to exercise control over the state, and over all of the property from which the wealth of the state is generated, and, thereby, to ensure that the vast majority of that wealth is distributed to them, despite the fact that they create no part of that wealth.

It is from the ranks of this ruling class that the top brass of the state are drawn. They are the top civil servants, judges, military and so on. So, although the bourgeois-democracy, with its concession of periodic elections appears to give the majority of society control, or at least a say, in affairs, the reality, is that it is all merely superficial, and were the working-class ever to create a party that formed a government that even sought to give workers control over their own collective property, that state would do all in its power to prevent it, including, if required organising a coup against it. Democratic control by the majority of society, i.e. by the working class, can only ever be a charade, within the confines of bourgeois-parliamentary democracy. Even to enforce it, in conditions where workers sought to really defend their rights and interests, against the ruling-class, would require that the workers had their own extra-parliamentary forms of democracy, and organs of power. They would need their own directly elected, and immediately recallable workers' councils, as well as, their own democratically controlled workers' militia, armed by those workers' councils.

So, the attitude of Marxists to the idea of a citizen army, i.e. a workers' army, is much the same as our attitude to the idea of a worker' industrial army. That is, we are not hippy drop-outs, or deserters from the class struggle. We understand that capitalism exploits workers that form that industrial army, and that without the workers' labour, the capitalists could generate no wealth, or obtain the proceeds created by the workers. But, we don't argue that workers should just stop going to work, and drop-out. For one thing, the ruling class, with their massive hoards of money could survive by simply buying up existing stocks of food and so on, for much longer than can workers, which is why they are able to force workers to accept their exploitation in the first place. Whilst workers can stop work, for a time, by going on strike, when their real pay and conditions are reduced, they cannot do that indefinitely, and nor does it provide a solution to the real cause of their condition, which is the lack of control over their own collective property.

So, instead, Marxists try to patiently explain to workers that the real solution to this problem can only come from engaging in a political struggle to ensure that they gain that control over their collective property. As Marx put it in his Inaugural Address to the First International, the workers' cooperatives demonstrate, in practice the point, because, within them, the workers do exercise that control, but, to ensure that across the whole economy requires them to create their own political party that would change the law accordingly, removing the control that shareholders, currently, exercise, and handing it over to the workers where it belongs. But, no ruling class is going to sit back, and allow themselves to be simply voted out of existence. They would use all of the power of the state, including military power, to organise a coup to prevent it.

In the 19th century, Engels, examining this, in relation to Prussia, argued that this is why a Citizen Army, was, indeed, required, as the necessary corollary of universal suffrage. In other words, if all of the workers have the vote, and vote according to their interests, they would also need to form the army that enforced those laws, arms in hand, against the inevitable slave-owners revolt that the capitalist class would engage in.

“The more workers who are trained in the use of weapons the better. Universal conscription is the necessary and natural corollary of universal suffrage; it puts the voters in the position of being able to enforce their decisions gun in hand against any attempt at a coup d'état.

(The Prussian Military Question and the German Workers' Party)

Of course, this is only the case if the army itself does not suffer the same problems as the rest of society of the ruling class exercising control over it. The hierarchical structure of the army, as with the police force, and the fact that the top brass of these organisations are drawn from, and loyal to the ruling class, ensures that they too form the basis of the continued control by the ruling class. It would only begin to be changed if workers insisted on the most complete and consistent application of the concepts of bourgeois-democracy, which again, the ruling class, and its state would never concede. It would require that all top civil servants, judges, military brass, police chiefs and so on be elected, and instantly recallable. It would require that the rank and file soldiers and police officers had full democratic control, including the right to elect their immediate commanders, and so on.

Following the experience of the 1848 Revolutions, Marx and Engels had set out the implications of that, by insisting that the workers had to maintain their own political and organisational independence, and Marx had argued the need to resist the idea of a citizen's militia under the control of the bourgeoisie, and its officers, demanding instead, the creation of workers' militia, under the democratic control of workers communes.

“The whole proletariat must be armed at once with muskets, rifles, cannon and ammunition, and the revival of the old-style citizens’ militia, directed against the workers, must be opposed. Where the formation of this militia cannot be prevented, the workers must try to organize themselves independently as a proletarian guard, with elected leaders and with their own elected general staff; they must try to place themselves not under the orders of the state authority but of the revolutionary local councils set up by the workers. Where the workers are employed by the state, they must arm and organize themselves into special corps with elected leaders, or as a part of the proletarian guard. Under no pretext should arms and ammunition be surrendered; any attempt to disarm the workers must be frustrated, by force if necessary. The destruction of the bourgeois democrats’ influence over the workers, and the enforcement of conditions which will compromise the rule of bourgeois democracy, which is for the moment inevitable, and make it as difficult as possible – these are the main points which the proletariat and therefore the League must keep in mind during and after the approaching uprising.”

(Marx 1850 Address To The Central Committee of The Communist League)

So, as I set out several years ago, we should, indeed, be in favour of a “Citizen's Army”, in the sense of it being, as Marx describes above, one that comprises workers, who form the vast majority of society, but it should be one that is created by, and directly under the control of the workers themselves. For that to happen, Marxists demand several things to occur first.

1. That the existing standing army be disbanded, and that, in the absence of that, all soldiers be given democratic rights to elect their immediate commanders, and so on, and that the military top brass be directly elected and immediately recallable by the electorate, and that this apply to the police force too.
   
   
2. That, in order to ensure that any Citizen's Militia, be truly democratic, and to ensure that weapons are not simply handed out willy-nilly to criminals, or to fascists and other reactionary enemies of the working-class, we need the establishment of directly elected workers' councils in each locality, the delegates to these councils to be directly elected, and immediately recallable by the workers in each workplace, in the given locality. These workers councils to be linked up across the country, and delegates from them sent to regional and national councils.
   
   
3. The arming of the workers, via the workers councils to be effected by placing all armaments production under direct democratic workers control.
   
   
4. In place of the existing standing army and police force, which acts to protect the interests of the ruling class against the interests of workers, the local workers councils should organise the community policing of each area, by workers themselves, the workers being given paid leave to fulfil such activity, as currently occurs with jury duty and so on. In each area, the local workers' militia, should form a part of the national militia, under the control of the national workers' council.
   
   
5. All workers forming part of the worker's militia, be given paid leave, and be provided with comprehensive training in weapons and military tactics. In the first instance, experienced working-class soldiers can be drafted to assist in such training.
   
   
6. Attempts should be made to link the national workers' council with similar such councils established by workers in the rest of Europe, and to, thereby, link the organised and democratically controlled workers' militia, across Europe, to ensure the defence of workers' interests with each other, across borders, against the warmongering interests of the ruling class, which seeks to set the workers of each country at the throat of their fellow workers for the benefit, purely, of the interests of the ruling class.

Of course, therefore, one of the first things that this “Citizen's Army” would seek to do, would be to insist that “the workers main enemy is at home”. It would not settle for the simple replacement of the Tweedle Dee government of Sunak, by the Tweedle Dummer government of Starmer, but would imply that workers had reached a level of consciousness, whereby they had created their own workers' party committed to fighting for their own class interests, against those of the ruling class. It would, as Engels suggested, simply legislate away the unjustified control over socialised capital, exercised by shareholders, and would do so with the power of an armed and democratically controlled “Citizen's Militia” standing behind it. That, of course, is far from what General Sanders, or other imperialist warmongers have in mind!

Of course, we are nowhere near any condition in which the working-class, in Britain, is about to create democratically elected workers' councils, or, thereby, proceed to the full scale arming of workers, and creation of workers' militia. That is no reason, as Trotsky, described, in relation to such demands during the Chinese Revolution, not to discuss them and, thereby, to patiently explain to workers, particularly the more advanced amongst them, the true nature of these demands, and of workers' democracy, as against the sham of bourgeois-democracy, and the nature of its state.