The British ruling class loves to romanticise the soldier. Recruitment ads paint the armed forces as a path to honour, adventure, or personal growth. But stripped of the glossy propaganda, what does it actually mean to become a soldier in the United Kingdom?
It means selling your labour power not to build or heal, but to kill, destroy, and intimidate on behalf of business. It means participating in murder and violent oppression for the financial benefit of those who own and rule: the monopoly capitalists.
The soldier as hired muscle for capital
Every empire needs muscle. For Britain’s ruling class, that muscle wears camouflage. The UK military doesn’t defend the working class of Britain; it defends British capital’s overseas interests: its access to oil, shipping lanes, and investment markets, its dominance in financial speculation, and its alliances within NATO’s global war machine.
From Ireland to Iraq, from Malaya to Libya, the British Army has never fought to “defend freedom.” It has fought to suppress freedom movements, to prop up puppet regimes, and to crush resistance to capitalist exploitation. The modern soldier is, in essence, a mercenary in service of imperial finance — a gangster whose boss wears a suit in the City of London rather than a tracksuit in south London.
Blood money and false choices
The system offers working-class youth few options: unemployment, poverty wages, or the army. The military preys on desperation, promising training, security, and respect. Yet what it actually delivers is a job drenched in blood. The wage you receive is a cut of imperial plunder; your labour enriches arms corporations and the parasitic class that profits from endless war.
This isn’t “service to your country.” It’s service to your exploiters. The government sends working-class people to kill other working-class people across the world, so the rich can continue to live in luxury. As Lenin explained, imperialist wars are fought “for the division and redivision of the world among the great powers, for profits.” The British soldier is simply a footsoldier in that global criminal enterprise.
The myth of honour
Bourgeois propaganda speaks of “honour” and “duty,” but there is no honour in enforcing the will of the oppressor. To bomb villages in Afghanistan or starve children in Yemen through blockade isn’t heroism, it’s collaboration in mass murder. To stand guard over oilfields or occupy a foreign people’s land is not patriotism, it’s gangsterism dressed in a flag.
The working class of Britain has no quarrel with the peoples of the Middle East, Africa, or Asia. Our real enemies are not abroad but at home: the landlords, financiers, and politicians who exploit us all and use the army to protect their system.
The class nature of the army
Marx and Engels taught that the state is the organ of one class’s domination over another, and the armed forces are the backbone of that domination. The British Army, Navy, and Air Force are not neutral institutions. They exist to enforce the rule of the capitalist class — at home by intimidating strikers and protesters, and abroad by punishing nations that defy Western control.
The so-called “defence industry” is a massive subsidy to monopoly capital. Firms like BAE Systems, Rolls-Royce Defence, and Lockheed Martin UK make billions from the blood of the global poor. Their shareholders never set foot on the battlefield; they simply cash the cheques.
From imperialist soldier to class traitor
Joining the military or continuing to serve once you know the truth means consciously participating in oppression. To stay in uniform is to make peace with murder for pay.
True courage means breaking with the imperialist machine, refusing to fight in wars of aggression, and turning your loyalty toward your own class, the working class of Britain and the oppressed peoples of the world. History’s greatest soldiers were not those who served empires, but those who fought to overthrow them: the Red Army in 1917, the Chinese People’s Liberation Army, the anti-fascist partisans across Europe, and other liberation fighters.
The working class will one day need its own people’s army, not to invade or enslave, but to defend socialism against capitalist restoration. Until then, every step toward that future requires breaking the hold of imperialist militarism.
Conclusion
To join the British military is not to “serve your country.” It is to serve monopoly capital, to enforce imperialist violence, and to profit from oppression. The army uniform does not make you a hero; it makes you a gangster for the ruling class.
The way out is through class struggle, through unity of the workers at home with the oppressed abroad, and through the fight for a socialist Britain free from exploitation and war.
