Appeal: Stop Funding the Wars in Ukraine and Gaza!

Posted on May 27, 2024

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For 30 months, the war ravaging Ukraine has claimed nearly a million Ukrainian and Russian victims, most of them civilians. For the last six months, the massacre of the Palestinian people in Gaza has continued relentlessly, working towards the physical destruction of an entire people through war, famine and destitution.

These wars add to those which have been devastating the African continent for years. On both sides of the Atlantic, those who govern our countries have been fueling the war. They have voted, and continue to vote, hundreds of billions in war funding without which these conflicts could not continue. They have voted and are voting for measures that involve our countries further and further in these conflicts, even to the point of threatening to launch our direct participation in combat, as French President Macron has done on several occasions in recent weeks

We, the workers and working-class militants of the United States and Europe, state this loud and clear: the people of our countries do not want war. Workers and young people are horrified as they watch their governing powers dragging them into this downward spiral. Workers and young people are suffering the consequences of this war: the hundreds of billions engulfed in the war economy are fueled by the destruction of public services, workers’ rights, schools and hospitals. In all our countries, workers and young people want the billions to be spent on the needs of young people and the population, not on war.

This is why we are insisting on the absolute urgency of stopping the funding of wars, stopping the funds voted by our respective parliamentary [Congressional] representations; funds for war in particular for Israel, without which the massacre in Gaza could not continue; funds for war to fuel the war in Ukraine.

As we uphold peace and the independence of the workers’ movement, we would like to recall that 109 years ago on the European continent, workers and peoples faced a similar situation. 109 years ago, in the small Swiss village of Zimmerwald, the first international socialist conference brought together a handful of militant workers who, in the midst of the turmoil, affirmed the need to stop the fighting. In addition, some of them, the so-called “Zimmerwald Left”, addressed the workers in the following terms:

“There is therefore no reason why this fratricidal war should be waged to the end, … on the contrary, every effort must be strained to put an end to it. The time for this has already come. What you must demand first is that the Socialist MPs that you have delegated to parliament to fight against capitalism, against militarism, against the exploitation of the people, do their duty. … Those who have trampled upon that duty have supported the bourgeoisie in their rapacious war, You must demand that they either resign from their seats or that they use the platform of parliament to make clear to the people the nature of the present war and that outside of parliament they help the working class to resume its struggle … refusal of the war funding!

As we can see, we can repeat the words said in 1915: to the members of the United States Congress, to the members of Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) who, on 20 April, voted $61 billion in war funding for Ukraine and $8 billion in war funding to arm Taiwan against China; to the MEPS [European Members of Parliament] of the Socialist and Social-Democrat group, of The Left groups (including La France Insoumise, the Bloco de Esquerda, etc.) who, in the European Parliament, on 32 occasions and again last February approved dozens of billions in funding for the war in Ukraine, we say: You who were sent to sit in these parliaments to represent the interests of the workers in the face of capitalism, militarism and exploitation; you who, up to now, have trampled underfoot your commitments by bringing your help to the war instead of opposing it, it is up to you to either hand in your mandates [step down], or else make use of the parliamentary forum to explain to the people the nature of the war and initiate the struggle.

Yes, it is necessary to break with this policy of war, with the funding of war, and to abide by the mandate of the majority of workers and peoples on both sides of the Atlantic: no support for chauvinism, no support for our governments, no support for war. It’s time to end the fighting and the financing of the fighting.