Conscription: Unjust Wars and Those Who Refuse to Fight Them

By Bill Barclay

Bill Barclay is a long-time DSA member, a participant in the North Star Caucus, a member of the National Political Education Committee, and a principal in the Chicago Political Economy Group.

This is excerpted from an article in the Democratic Left Blog of DSA.

Fifty-five years ago this week, on October 21, 1967, almost a hundred thousand people attended a  protest against the war in Vietnam, and some 50,000 marched on the Pentagon. Anger about the war that was wreaking such destruction on that country and a draft that was sending so many conscripts to kill and die fueled this and many more protests. As the United States has fought its “forever wars” in the past decades, the anger toward  universal conscription has faded, because the conscripts of a “volunteer” army enroll primarily for economic reasons. Today, soldiers in Russia face conscription over a war none of them sought and few want to fight in. Bill Barclay reflects on the race and class issues of universal conscription. . . .