Who are "they"? The politicians who decide about wars and our misery, who supposedly "represent" us but who are actually only the managers of the interests of the owners of capital in each country.

Who are "we"? Those who in all countries, developed or underdeveloped, produce and operate practically everything in society including the arms factories, and who in times of economic crisis and war (which often go together) see our daily anguish getting worse, under the reality of threat of unemployment and, for some of us, under the fire of bombs or as cannon fodder.

Both those of them who have gone to war and those of them who are against it. Those who are waging the war are not doing so for the reasons they claim: Bush and Co speak of a crusade against a tyrant, of a struggle of democracy against dictatorship, whereas it’s a question of oil, markets and geo-strategical positions. The governments that are against this military intervention speak of loving peace and of humanitarianism, whereas it is a question of . . . oil, markets and geo-strategical positions. The so-called opponents of the war also have blood and gun-powder on their hands. The French government, today the most anti-war and anti-American, bears a direct responsibility for the different wars in former Yugoslavia, in the genocide in Rwanda in 1994, in the first Gulf War, in the war in Afghanistan; its soldiers permanently play an active and bloody role of neo-colonial police in Africa, as at this moment in the Ivory Coast. German capitalism is no different, not to mention Russian capitalism.

The opinion polls, despite being known to be the subject of multiple manipulations, are clear: for the great majority of the population of countries which publish these kinds of enquiries, politicians have become the subject of mistrust where it’s not disgust. Many of us today distrust the discourse which the politicians employ to justify or oppose this, second Gulf War. Rarely has the sordidly economic character of wars appeared so openly. To the extent that sometimes even the most blasé, in front of their television, get the impression of seeing a crime against humanity during "prime time".

However, some of us console ourselves by believing what our politicians tells us . . . as with religions, for which the world does not appear as bad as it is. Sometimes people even go as far as voting for one of them, as if the candidates for the management of capitalism could be any different from each other.

People console themselves with lies because they have no alternative project. Because we are convinced that a different world, a world not governed by money and profit, where human welfare can become the only aim of production, of all activity, is a pure unrealisable utopia.

As long as we think this way, we will be condemned to submit to their laws, their exploitation, their absurd wars, their mad self-destruction of the planet. And to console ourselves we will be pushed into believing their lies.

The existence of a new world, a new society without classes or fatherlands, based on the general free availability of goods, on co-operation and sharing, depends, however, on us and only on us. On those who do not benefit from the laws of the market, who do not live from the exploitation of others, who are exploited (when we are not left on the street) and who by our daily work make exist the machine which mangles us. It is us who produce all the material means which make wars possible, it is us who feed and maintain the politicians and the military who wage them. It is us who could take all decision-making power from them by taking it ourselves, collectively by becoming the masters of the means of production so as to orient them exclusively towards satisfying human needs.

The old slogan "Proletarians of All Lands, Unite!" is more relevant than ever. Not only because only the uniting of those who world-wide suffer from the system can stop the logic of capitalism, but also because the material, the technological means of this same uniting are developing before our eyes.

Develop our confidence in ourselves. Transform our immediate, partial struggles into parts of the struggle against capitalism itself, seeking the widest unity, discussing collectively the shape of the society that we can and must build. There is no other way, if we want that one day there will no longer be anybody to take us for fools.

Internet address: cerclediscussionparis@hotmail.com