[lbo-talk] Platypus: what we are, what we do, and why

[Chris Doss]

I don't know anything about that, but intuitively -- that is, based entirely on what you write here -- it seems that here we are talking about something that divides the working class inside a capitalist society (Britain) and by extension wars between capitalist nations (such as WWI), and so is not applicable to wars between capitalist countries and non (pre)capitalist ones that don't have a working class, like Britain in India for example. Unless M&E were motivated for some other reason.
 

----- Original Message ----
From: James Heartfield <Heartfield at blueyonder.co.uk>

However, there is an important qualification to make, which makes sense of the later views of Lenin and others on anti-militarism. Marx and Engels changed their view of the small nation's war against the big, because of their experience of the influence of the Fenian campaign against Britain. The Irish struggle against British imperialism divided the British workling class between those who were loyal to Britain, and those who sympathised with the Irish rebels. Marx and Engels were of the latter, thinking that this nascent anti-Imperialist struggle was 'a marvellous thing - at once violent and anti British' (from memory).