Mary E. Marcy on what World War One’s battle for dominance by competing national ‘trusts’ means for the international working class.

‘International Capital and the World Trust’ by Mary E. Marcy from International Socialist Review. Vol. 16 No. 4. October, 1915.

Today the greatest capitalist groups of the strongest nations in Europe are engaged in fighting for new worlds to conquer–capitalistically. No matter how this war terminates, and the next war ends, and the wars still following close upon their heels may happen to close, it is pretty certain that there will arise out of the world anguish and industrial disaster, one strong capitalist group dominating the world.

We are seeing the battle of the various big national Trusts being fought out before our eyes today, just as our fathers witnessed the fights of the warring steel kings and oil companies and railroad corporations only a few years ago in many modern countries.

And while some of our fathers, who may have been socialists, realized that centralization, or the Trust, was a step forward in human progress, predicating, as it does, the time when the workers of the world shall take over these trusts to run them for the benefit of the working, instead of the exploiting class, while some of our fathers may have understood these things, they did nothing to HELP Rockefeller or Morgan or Harriman or Field in their great campaign for crushing out their competitors.

These were battles of the owning, capitalist class, and no intelligent workingman came forward to offer his life to help Rockefeller freeze out the independent oil companies. Men did not shoulder guns to give Morgan a monopoly of the American steel industry.

But in the fight of the German monopolies against French monopolies, of German trusts against English and Belgian trusts, the European workers have taken up arms and are today fighting the great war which will determine which national trust shall be master, which capitalist group shall dominate all Europe and, finally perhaps, the whole world.

Understanding these things, the revolutionary workers are opposed to fighting this war of their exploiters, for the benefit of their exploiters. They know that it will merely benefit the strongest capitalists of one great nation, that it will mean greater centralization and internationalization of capital.

And this is what all wars mean, except the class war (between the working class and those who rob them). And this is why we are opposed to ALL capitalist wars.

It is true that we may not be able to prevent these wars, but at least we must do all in our united power to prevent them. It is true that the internationalization of capitalism and the world trust may be inevitable, but it is equally true that we should vote no war funds, appropriations for increasing armies and navies to help along this gigantic centralization.

It should be the part of every intelligent workingman and woman, and every revolutionist in particular, to oppose and point out how these wars are prepared for and how the working class is used to fight and murder and die, solely in the interests of the great capitalists of the warring nations.

We should oppose all wars at the same time we are pointing out that they are the wars of the enemies of the working class, who are only seeking greater fields in which to exploit labor.

We must keep our hands clean from the responsibility of helping to wage or to make possible capitalist wars. We must oppose all war plans, whether it be for a small army or a large army, for a small navy or for enormous sea power. Of the greater or lesser evils, we must choose NEITHER.

If the great capitalists of the various nations desire to fight for world conquest and world power, it may be that we cannot prevent them. But we can refuse to do their fighting for them.

Many well informed European comrades and scholars predict that this is only the first of a series of great world wars–that the capitalists of the great nations will bring about in their struggles to become the world-dominating capitalist group. This may well prove possible.

But during these wars the workers who fight them may be either learning to perceive the interests instigating these great slaughters and to rebel as they understand, or they may degenerate into mere cogs in vast military machines, who know only enough to obey the orders of those in command.

Wars may be made the greatest educational force the world has ever known, provided we do not hesitate to point out the true causes and hidden interests behind them, provided we do not hesitate to show the workers where they are fighting the battles of their enemies, provided indeed, that we seize our opportunities for teaching the workers the real meaning of wars.

We must try to prevent these wars, and if we fail, use them so that they will be eye-openers to the working class, so that year by year, more and ever more, workers may understand the old double-cross system by which the worker loses, no matter which national capitalist group may win.

The International Socialist Review (ISR) was published monthly in Chicago from 1900 until 1918 by Charles H. Kerr and loyal to the Socialist Party of America. During the editorship of A.M. Simons it was largely theoretical and moderate. In 1908, Charles H. Kerr took over as editor with strong influence from Mary E Marcy. The magazine became the foremost proponent of the SP’s left wing growing to tens of thousands of subscribers. It remained revolutionary in outlook and anti-militarist during World War One. It liberally used photographs and images, with news, theory, arts and organizing in its pages. It was closed down in government repression in 1918.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/isr/v16n04-oct-1915-ISR-riaz-ocr.pdf