Who will follow the road to World War III?

Posted on November 20, 2024 by irishmarxism

It is reported that the US has approved the use of long range missiles against Russia and that the first missiles have been fired. This requires that US personnel participate directly in identifying the targets and programming the attacks, authorised by a President who is mentally decrepit.

It’s something like a nightmare scenario that the United States is going to attack Russia with its missiles using willing proxies. Who can possibly think that this is a good idea?

Over two years ago the left supporters of Ukraine vehemently denied that the war was an inter-imperialist one, on the basis that ‘to describe the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, in which the latter country has no ambition, let alone intention, of seizing Russian territory . . . to call this conflict inter-imperialist, rather than an imperialist war of invasion, is an extreme distortion of reality.’ Now we are apparently told that the US will provide its missiles, programme them, and employ its ISR (Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance) in support only of the Ukrainian invasion of Russia in Kursk. Does this make the idea any better?

Two years ago the left supporters of NATO intervention were claiming that ‘we must also oppose the delivery of air fighters to Ukraine that Zelensky has been demanding. Fighters are not strictly defensive weaponry, and their supply to Ukraine would actually risk significantly aggravating Russian bombing.’ These fighters have been provided and are in operation.

A year later the same supporters were stating that ‘NATO is not waging an all-out proxy war against Russia proper’, citing as evidence of this ‘Washington’s refusal to green-light Ukraine’s bombing of Russia’s territory or even Crimea, and to provide Kyiv with adequate means for that purpose. Joe Biden’s refusal to deliver the F-16 fighter jets that the Ukrainian government is requesting is a case in point.’

This month the same pro-imperialist left is stating that ‘the supply of arms to Ukraine has been insufficient and slow’ and ‘Governments, including NATO countries, should provide the weapons necessary for Ukraine to win.’ Since it is widely accepted by imperialist experts and commentators that even the long-range missiles now approved will not allow Ukraine to win, this pro-imperialist left is not just trailing behind US imperialism but is now in advance of it – in supporting provision of whatever weapons that ‘are necessary for Ukraine to win.’

They have written a blank cheque for imperialist intervention, one year after their previous article was entitled ‘Supporting Ukraine—without writing a blank check’! Have they even noticed the shift, or does the righteousness of the Ukrainian cause lead them to ignore or dismiss or otherwise justify the risk of World War III?

In this article it is admitted that the aim of retaking Crimea is ‘an escalation by NATO . . . [that] would be reckless and should be opposed.’ It states that ‘the recovery of those parts of Eastern Ukraine identified by the 2015 Minsk II agreement or of the Crimean Peninsula cannot for that matter be regarded as Ukrainian war goals that should be supported.’ It says that ‘the only acceptable solution of such quarrels is by letting the original populations of the disputed territories vote freely and democratically for their self-determination.’ Presumably the forced reintegration of these by Ukraine would therefore be unacceptable? Why then are they supporting a war which has precisely this aim?

There are now no limits set to supporting Ukrainian and Western imperialist war aims. The previous claims about their objectives have been exposed as nonsense, having previously stated that imperialism ‘has not even agreed to help Ukraine recover all the territory that it lost since 2014, which includes parts of Donetsk and Luhansk as well as the whole of Crimea. There is no serious indication until now that this has been or has become Washington’s goal, while there are plenty of indications to the contrary. . .’ The much heralded Ukrainian counter-offensive in 2023, prepared and planned with NATO, had precisely these objectives. Did the pro-war left not notice?

On the other hand, it is still claimed that the war is ‘a struggle for national liberation and self-determination’ and ‘for independence’, even though it is admitted that Ukraine was and is already an ‘independent country’ and that the self-determination on offer from the West is a cynical pretence.

Their latest statement says that ‘NATO countries, should provide the weapons necessary for Ukraine to win. It should not entail an increase in their military expenditure, the promotion of militarism or the expansion NATO and other military blocs – which should be disbanded . . .’

Yet its previous statement argued that ‘short of benefiting from NATO’s Article 5, Ukraine has become a NATO member in all other respects and for all intents and purposes . . . NATO will certainly further build up Ukraine’s military capabilities after the ongoing war, so that Ukraine’s future deterrence of potential Russian aggression will be considerably enhanced. The country will hence become a precious de facto auxiliary to NATO in confronting Russia.’ The statement further admits that Zelenskyy ‘is inviting private venture capitalists such as Blackrock to invest and buy up Ukraine’s assets. For his government, the message is clear: Ukraine is for sale.’

How subordination within NATO and selling its productive assets is ‘national liberation’, ‘self-determination’ and ‘independence’ is anyone’s guess. The invasion of the ‘territorial and (neo)colonial domain of another country’ that this pro-war left first denounced is now evident not just in the invasion by Russia, but also through the actions of the Ukrainian capitalist state and its alliance with Western imperialism, primarily the US, on which Ukraine is now utterly dependent.

Again and again the actions that are claimed would confirm the war as an inter-imperialist one have come to pass, to the point that the United States is employing Ukraine to attack Russia with its missiles. Yet still it is denied. The cognitive confusion and degeneration of the titular leader of Western imperialism has its analogue in the confusion and political degeneration of large swathes of the Western left that criticises him for not being aggressive and bellicose enough.

Is it possible that it will find a reverse gear and admit that it has got it all wrong?

That might be true if all we had was confusion, but this confusion is a result of political degeneration. The confirmation that Russian nuclear doctrine now entails the possible use of nuclear weapons upon attack by a non-nuclear power that is supported by a nuclear one makes clear the stakes involved in the recent US escalation. That Trump is now the promise of an end to the war, while most of the left supports its continuation, even while saying that it believes that “Ukraine cannot win the war’, is a criminal betrayal of both the working class, including the Ukrainian working class, and of socialism.

This left stupidly compares its support for war to support for a workers’ strike that is judged unwinnable. Besides the fact that socialists, in certain circumstances, may seek to draw to a close a strike that will result in a greater defeat if it continues, the comparison of a workers’ struggle with that of a rotten and corrupt capitalist state, in alliance with western imperialism, shows a complete inability to understand class politics. The repeated conflation of the Ukrainian working class, its separate interests and the need to oppose the NATO imperialist alliance on the one hand, with ‘Ukraine’, the capitalist Ukrainian state and its imperialist war, on the other, demonstrates that it has no way out of its capitulation.

A left that cannot oppose the drift to world war, in fact supporting the dynamic towards it, while surrendering the claim to prevent it to the reactionary right, is one utterly lost. The ‘lesser evil’ Democratic Party has just demonstrated the poverty of this sort of politics. Only among the most rabid imperialist neocons is support for intensified and unlimited war popular; them and the pro-war left. The struggle against the war is a struggle against both.

Should we support the Ukrainian Left’s route to victory? (2 of 2)

Posted on November 5, 2024 by irishmarxism

As I noted at the start of the previous post, various leftists in the West have said that we should listen to the voices of Ukrainian socialists and follow their lead, except, as we have seen, they are following the lead of the Zelenskyy regime. His ‘victory plan’, the part that is not a secret to the Ukrainian people and known only in Western imperialist capitals, is that Ukrainian resources should be made available to the corporations of these imperialist states; that Ukraine should be able to join their military alliance NATO, and that it fulfil this role by its troops being stationed in other European countries. No doubt these Ukrainian troops would include its far right and fascist units, which would allow the concentration of existing NATO troops against other targets.

These Ukrainian socialists excuse this policy of integration into Western imperialism as the appearance of a “sober approach”, regretting that it feels “humiliating” for it to be “turned down almost immediately”. They presumably deny that the moves towards NATO membership were crucial to precipitating the Russian invasion and entertain the idea that the cause of the war can be its solution.

This position stems partly from material weakness – “there is no left-wing political force in Ukraine that would voice the issues inherent to working people” – but this can only begin to be rectified by developing an independent political programme that stands upon the interests of working people. Sotsialnyi Rukh (Social Movement) is a social movement because it is not a socialist one. It floats in Ukrainian society and reflects, through its liberal conscience, the reactionary nationalism of Ukrainian society and its state. It cannot therefore articulate a position separate from the ruling regime.

It notes that the regime is “singling out new internal enemies: Russian speakers, “victims of colonial thinking”, followers of Moscow priests, collaborators, Kremlin agents”; with “manifestations of linguistic chauvinism, justification of hostility towards national minorities . . . and fostering ideological uniformity”; but it doesn’t decisively break from the ideological dominance of Ukrainian nationalism and makes the same ultimatist demands in relation to the pro-Russian East as the most rabid fascist – “recognition of the annexation of occupied territories is obviously out of the question”. Yet where is the attempt to reconcile this demand with claimed opposition to the view that the people of these regions are “internal enemies”? It can only dribble that this “will complicate the reintegration of occupied territories.”

Calls for “uniting as many people as possible around ideas of justice, freedom, and solidarity” are only so much sanctimonious sermons without a relevant political programme, and without outright opposition to those opposed to anything meaningful these words might entail, which includes the Ukrainian state and its imperialist sponsors, on whom it is now totally reliant. Where on earth is Western imperialism a force for “justice, freedom, and solidarity”? This Social Movement declares its “support for victims of far-right violence” but has nothing to say about this far-right being an integral and leading component of the Ukrainian armed forces that it supports.

Sotsialnyi Rukh states that “people should have a stake in the country’s future and respect for human dignity must be at the core of a society that asks its members to risk their lives for it” – a disregarded acknowledgement that this is precisely what does not exist, and which renders its whole approach inadmissible. The correct response, enunciated by Marx in similar circumstances in which it was claimed that a reactionary state can be of assistance – and promoted now as resulting from “a sincere dialogue from the government” – is to state that “the working class is revolutionary, or it is nothing.” What does this mean for Ukrainian workers today?

It starts by discarding illusions in the Ukrainian state and that the purpose of “a political movement” is that it “ensures the voice of the people is heard in the corridors of power.” The corridors of power are staffed by reactionaries beholden to Western imperialism, seeking a new mobilisation of Ukrainian workers for the cause of membership of its imperialist alliance – a blood sacrifice on behalf of those whose plan to is enrich themselves on Ukraine after the war.

Opposition to the Russian invasion does not require support for NATO or membership of it, and the Sotsialnyi Rukh view that without “security guarantees” from the West Ukraine faces “an open invitation for renewed aggression” ignores that Ukraine thereby becomes hostage to Western imperialism’s aggression and any Russian response. “Security guarantees” will require assurances of “predatory exploitation” by “foreign investors” with all the “inequality, alienation and disenfranchisement” that will result. The enemy of my enemy is not my friend.

The unity of the workers of Ukraine and with their opposite number in Russia requires opposition to national chauvinism, with its hostility to national minorities, and only on this basis can a peaceful reconciliation of any kind be proposed as an earnest and sincere promise of unity without oppression. Sotsialnyi Rukh cannot promise this by condemning such things as the Israeli oppression of Palestinians while seeking support and alliance with the same US imperialism that is the sponsor and accomplice of this oppression. It is not possible to run with the fox and hunt with the hounds’ as the old saying goes.

Sotsialnyi Rukh demands “the restoration of electoral rights, the right to peaceful assembly and workers’ strikes, and the abolition of all restrictions on labor and social rights” but proposes that a “sincere dialogue” with the government that took them away is the way to achieve them. Only by relying on the strength of the working class movement itself can the prerogatives of the working class be defended and advanced. If it is too weak to assert them itself, it will never gain the strength to do so by relying on those who took them away.

Spontaneous resistance has arisen in opposition to the street kidnapping of workers so that they can be sent to their deaths at the front. This resistance should be organised with the demand that summary arrest be ended; corruption in mobilisation exposed; that all conscripts receive proper training; that they have the right to organise trade unions and the right to protect themselves, including from suicidal orders from the rear. None of this is possible through “demand(ing) full state control over the protection of lives and the well-being of workers.”

The Ukrainian state has declared, even in the words of Sotsialnyi Rukh, that it “owes nothing to its citizens” and that its appeals are “hollow”. By refusing to break from it, Sotsialnyi Rukh demonstrates the same for itself.

The Ukrainian state has no theory of victory that does not involve massive escalation of direct NATO intervention; to endorse it or give it a left gloss does not alter this in any way. For workers in the West, it would mean following a road to escalation with all the risks of a world war that this involves. To do so would see them dragged towards the same subordination to their own state and ruling class – where its left pro-war supporters have already gone – and politically unarmed to prevent world war.

The last thing workers in the West should do is take their lead from such a ‘social movement’. For both, the slogan ‘the main enemy is at home’ remains the road to victory.

Back to part 1

Should we support the Ukrainian Left’s route to victory? (1 of 2)

Posted on November 1, 2024 by irishmarxism

At the start of the war in Ukraine various leftists in the West said that we should listen to the voices of Ukrainian socialists, which might have made some sense were these people socialist. Except they are not. Two recent statements by them confirm their reactionary character and have value only to illuminate their political bankruptcy and, by extension, those in the West who follow them and have called for others to do so.

The statements address what is necessary for Ukrainian victory and the tasks of the left in achieving it. It is supposed to be a left alternative to Zelenskyy’s much trumpeted ‘victory plan’– touted round the various capitals of western imperialism – but reveals itself to be a plea for succour to the regime that has sought it itself from imperialism and failed.

It is not an alternative to it but a pathetic reflection of it. It is useless even for its own purposes and worse than worthless as a guide for a working class alternative course out of the war. It can be summed up by one sentence within it that shows that it pretends to no alternative to the current state, and therefore no possibility of an alternative way out of the catastrophe inflicted on the country. It states that “We will demand full state control over the protection of lives and the well-being of workers . . .” The same state that colluded in precipitating the disaster – that has delivered its people into a needless war that has wrought such death and destruction – is to be the protector of the lives of its workers. This is both absurd and treacherous.

The statements themselves can’t help but note the current misdeeds of this state, its “corruption, censorship, and other abuses by officials”, and the reaction of Ukrainian workers – “civilians no longer queue at draft stations but actively evade mobilisation. Reported cases of draft dodging have tripled since 2023, and polls consistently show that nearly half of respondents view this as reasonable.” They note “nearly 30,000 cases of AWOL have been registered in the first six months of 2024” and “the brutality and impunity of draft officers, who press-gang men off the streets . . . In the meantime, reports from the battlefield describe how unmotivated, untrained, and even unfit recruits endanger the rest, making the result of increasing coercion questionable.” Questionable?, is that all it is? Medically unfit men kidnapped off the street and sent to the front – poorly trained and armed – to die in a war against a much more powerful enemy?

The result is that “after 970 days of war, 10,000s dead, 100,000s wounded, and millions displaced, the toll is immense. Few families remain untouched by this devastation.” Yet it refuses to denounce the ridiculous tally of dead and injured quoted in the Western media, fed to them by the Ukrainian state and the Zelenskyy regime. Its statement is unwilling to challenge these lies about the devastating consequences of the war, while saying that they have “taken our people for granted”, yet refusing to acknowledge the human cost that repeats this.

“Under the realities of oligarchic capitalism, restrictions on freedoms often serve the interests of the elites”, one statement declares, in admission of the rotten nature of the society and state that commits these crimes. It notes the statement of the minister of social policy Oksana Zholnovich, that “we need to break everything that is social today and simply reformat from scratch the new social contract about social policy in our state.”

It sums up the hypocrisy and real policy of the state by saying that “appeals to civic duty ring hollow when the state openly declares that it owes nothing to its citizens”, yet its proposals are that “the government should start a dialogue with the people about the achievable goals of the war.” It simply wants “to cooperate with other forces to build a political movement that ensures the voice of the people is heard in the corridors of power. “Sotsialnyi Rukh (Social Movement) demands a sincere dialogue from the government with society on how we arrived here and what we can realistically expect.” A “sincere dialogue” with a regime that promised peace and an end to corruption that has instead walked its people into war with new opportunities for massively increased graft through it.

It would be possible to feel a little sorry for this movement were it not for its own hypocrisy and war policy. It accuses the Zelenskyy regime of presiding over “a caricature of a war economy” that “makes it possible to prolong the war at the cost of significant human losses and constant mobilization.” Yet its own policy is simply an extension of this through a state “subordinated to the priorities of defense . . . mobilising all resources for defence”, while simultaneously promising that it “defends the rights of conscripts and servicemen to dignified treatment” when many of these workers do not want to be conscripts at all.

Zelenskyy’s plan is criticised for “its disproportionate reliance on the West’, while acknowledging that “to fight against Russian aggression . . ., we need support from the global community, including humanitarian and military assistance.” It laments this reliance but then states that “this might appear to be a sober approach”, with the further complaint that it feels “more humiliating” to be “turned down almost immediately”.

It canvasses what would be an acceptable peace but includes proposals that shows it has no idea “how we arrived here”, i.e. why the war began, never mind how realistically it might end: “The only deal with a chance of being supported, by a slight margin, includes de-occupation of Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions, combined with NATO and EU memberships. . . . Therefore, the greatest mistake would be to pit diplomatic efforts against military support. Without meaningful solidarity, Ukraine and its people will fall — if not now, then later.”

It complains of “a quite remarkable shift from the earlier emotional appeals for solidarity to luring support with access to natural resources and promises of outsourcing Ukrainian troops for the European Union’s security”, but its own dependence on what it euphemistically calls “the global community”, and peace involving NATO membership, shows that its alternative to Zelenskyy is no alternative at all. It doesn’t even ask the question: why it is only now – after over two and a half years – that a purported plan for victory has been drafted? Or did all the others fail too?

Forward to part 2

A World going to War and the resistance (3 of 3) – a multipolar alternative?

Posted on October 6, 2024 by irishmarxism

In the previous post I said that the results of the war in Ukraine would include the deaths of hundreds of thousands; massive physical destruction; a Ukrainian state more corrupt and more subject to imperialist predation; increased division within the working class; and both NATO and the reactionary Russian belligerents remaining in place.

Yet the pro-war Western left defends NATO because without it Ukrainian victory would be inconceivable and it is this victory that they prioritise above all else. This is an inescapable consequence of their position.

Alternatively, some other leftists, in mirror image, support the victory of Russia but in doing so also bear responsibility for supporting the consequences of the war. They take this position on the grounds of opposition to US imperialist hegemony and for some, that a more multipolar or ‘pluripolar’ world is the pivotal objective. They do not seem to appreciate that the wars in Ukraine and Middle East are the results of the developing of this multipolar world, which is another name for imperialist rivalry and conflict. Only the historically ignorant could believe that the development of a multipolar capitalist world would not lead to imperialist conflict and war.

The idea that a more multipolar world will lead to equality of nations makes no sense to anyone who believes that capitalist states are political formations that compete with each other in an analogous way that capital itself competes – by destroying or expropriating rivals. Socialists believe that workers should not side with their own capitalist state and should fight it, just as we call on workers to oppose their own capitalist exploiter; supporting your own capitalist state is analogous to supporting you own exploiter.

That many have come to this sorry end means that they have also ended any real connection with socialism, regardless of any subjective beliefs. It’s not that they are stupid; it takes some intelligence to construct the respective arguments but the results above are the same whatever the rationale advanced.

It matters not if you think China is socialist and therefore you should support its ally Russia, because this means you desert the Chinese working class and Russian. It matters not that you do so to defend colonial or semi-colonial countries, because the point about multipolarity is that many of these countries have advanced and developed so that they exploit the rivalry within the multipolar system to defend their own state and class interests. The language of anti-imperialism, or anti-colonialism, is often employed by them to denounce other capitalists’ interests and power.

By coincidence, a friend sent me a link to an article that illustrates one consequence of the development of the multipolar world – the ability of some states to balance between US & Western imperialism on the one hand and China & Russia on the other. The article points to this in terms of economic collaboration between many BRICS countries and the Zionist state of Israel, exploding the idea that there is emerging some state alignment of the good guys against the bad. Not only are there no good guys but even pretence that there is a unified group doesn’t survive the obvious divisions within them, as the article illustrates.

One rationale for support for Russia was made on Facebook, which read: ‘In truth what will bring about a new revitalised working class movement is the fall of US imperialism. The world policeman will no longer be able to intervene throughout the world to suppress movements fighting for social equality. A big step forward for humanity. For instance, if there was no US imperialism there would be no genocide of the Palestinians and Israeli would cease to exist as a settler and apartheid state.’

The article referenced above makes clear that, while the US is currently decisive in defending the Zionist state, there are no principled reasons why other imperialist and capitalist powers would not do so also, just as they currently hypocritically collaborate with it. The principal reason that they do not, or cannot do so now, is because US imperialism is already doing it. Israel would not be averse to being someone else’s imperialist enforcer if it had to; its history shows previous reliance on the British, German and French imperialism, not to mention the early approval of the Soviet Union.

None of the capitalist states that are rivals of the US have demonstrated that they would not carry out the same policy as the US, were they in the same hegemonic position. Belief in a multipolar world seems to be under the illusion that such a world would involve the removal or amelioration of inter-imperialist rivalry and conflict, as opposed to the reality of its intensification, demonstrated in the current wars in Europe and Middle East. In such a situation, support for one or other imperialist alliance is not a temporary tactical or strategic approach but a fundamental capitulation to never-ending support for imperialism, whatever its particular variety might be.

There are two ways in which ‘the fall of US imperialism’ could occur and ‘the world policeman . . .no longer be able to intervene throughout the world’. The first is if a rival imperialist bloc defeated it, in which case there would be a new imperialist hegemon ‘able to intervene throughout the world’. What reason, let’s call it success, would lead this hegemon to behave differently? Would its current left supporters then withdraw their support or stick with it?

The second is if the US hegemon was overthrown by the working class. Let’s say through a combination of military defeat and internal revolt. The task of the working class in these circumstances, assuming for the sake of argument that only US imperialism ‘fell’, would be to defend itself against the rival hegemonic imperialist alliance. This would be because this new hegemon would recognise what its current left supporters do not, that its real enemies are the working class. In this case it is more likely that the rival imperialist alliance would seek to defend the newly subordinated US imperialism from overthrow by the working class and seek to crush it themselves.

What sense does it make to support this potential alternative imperialist hegemon unless one swallows the nonsense that China is either socialist, or is some sort of peaceful version of capitalism, which in either case would require ditching everything taught by Karl Marx about what capitalism is and what is involved in rule by the working class? Or even if one doesn’t consider oneself a Marxist, how is such a view given any confirmation by the history of the world over the last 150 years?

Whatever the steps necessary to establish an independent working class force in the world, they will not be taken through supporting either Western imperialism or the China-Russia Axis, not least because each makes their working class a prisoner of its own state and thereby prevents their unity across their division.

Back to part 2

A World going to War and the resistance (2 of 3) – Two proxy wars

Posted on October 4, 2024 by irishmarxism

Western imperialist support for the Zionist state and its genocide in Gaza has exposed its hypocrisy to millions across the world but the developing war against Iran exposes what lies behind this support.

The repeated provocations against Iran, involving assassination of leading figures and terrorist attacks in Lebanon have in each case been designed to provoke an Iranian response that would justify further Israeli attacks and increased intervention by the US. The US has been saying two things during this Israeli escalation: promoting a ceasefire that will release Israeli hostages but that will permit continued Zionist aggression thereafter, and repeated declarations of support for the Zionist state, backed up with more and more weapons plus financing for a deficit that is forecast to be almost three times that expected before the war but will turn out to be even greater.

The Western media repeats ad nauseum that the US has been struggling to prevent regional war and that it has also struggled to rein in Zionist bellicosity. What it also occasionally reports is that a new ‘reformist’ President in Iran is seeking to improve relations with Western imperialism in order to reduce sanctions against his country, and that this is why Iran is deliberately seeking to prevent escalation in its responses to provocation.

If the US wanted to rein in Israeli aggression, it would not supply the weapons that allows the Zionist state to carry out genocide, invade Lebanon and attack Iran. It would not supply the finance that allows the Zionist state to finance “the longest and most expensive war’ in its history, according to its finance minister. In other words the US is lying and the Western media parrots its lies, which are reported as news and then recycled by its talking heads and columnists as the truth.

Since the real enemy of the Zionist state and threat to its regional hegemony is Iran, the target of escalation in the war – through the invasion of Lebanon with the purpose of smashing Hizbollah – is the organisation’s patron. Since the Zionist state is the projection of US/Western imperialist power in the region the main enemy of the US is Iran, because behind it is Russia. And behind it – China.

The invasion of Lebanon and attacks on Iran are not something the US opposes but is its proxy war against Iran and Russia. Israel is thus playing the same role as Ukraine is playing in the war against Russia, which is why the US has supplied weapons and financing for both and why the Western media displays its bias in favour of both.

However, even the Western media is increasingly reporting that Ukraine is losing the war while trying to determine what can retrieved from the defeat. Anyone relying on this media would be surprised by this turn of events having been fed a diet of Russian failure and Ukrainian valour and success. The story now is very different.

In the Financial Times its reporters quotes the head of the Washington office of the European Council on Foreign Relations thar “we are losing the war” while the rabidly pro-imperialist Economist editorialises that ‘If Ukraine and its Western backers are to win, they must first have the courage to admit that they are losing’; rich coming from that publication – given the lateness to recognise it themselves. Even now it ventures a cunning plan for victory, of sorts, through yet more money to build up a Ukrainian arms industry, which is admission that Western imperialism can no longer supply Ukraine with their own weapons, not least because they are needed to kill Palestinians, Lebanese and Iranians.

Having advocated and heralded previous escalation by imperialism, The Economist sees no need to explain its own failure but simply supports yet more escalation and a plan even less credible than the one concocted by Zelensky.

Both publications provide ample evidence that Ukraine is failing and that the views of Ukrainians themselves are changing, making them less willing to fight the proxy war, never mind ‘fight to the last Ukrainian’.

“Most players want de-escalation here’ says a senior Ukrainian official, while one Ukrainian commander states his fear of a “forever war”, and another officer notes that “if the US turns off the spigot, we’re finished.” In The Economist yet another drone commander states that “the West and the United States in particular have an unequivocal responsibility for the deaths of Ukrainians.”

Both publications note the increasing corruption of the Ukrainian state: the forced mobilisation “is perceived as abusive, worse than if you are a criminal” according to the director of the Kyiv Centre for Economic Strategy. “It tears people apart. The real enemy is Russia, but at the same time they fear a corrupt, abusive enrolment office doing the wrong thing.” The effect on the front reported by The Economist is that ‘many of those drafted into service are ill-suited to fighting: too old, too ill, too drunk.’ It notes that there is no clear path out of the army, making ‘being mobilised seem like a one-way ticket to the morgue’. It states that 5-10% are absent without leave despite prosecutions and that ‘fewer than 30% of Ukrainians consider draft-dodging shameful.’

The Economist also notes that ‘corruption and nationalism are on the rise’ while the Financial Times reports a governing party MP that ‘the biggest domestic problem for Zelenskyy might come from a nationalist minority opposed to any compromise, some of whom are now armed and trained to fight . . . The far right in Ukraine is growing. The right wing is a danger to democracy.”

Thus, many Ukrainians understand the important role of Western imperialist intervention, even if the pro-war Western left professes not to. They understand the rampant corruption of the state, the life and death consequences for themselves, and seek to avoid them, while this left champions the defence of the state and supports the supply of weapons to Ukrainian conscripts who simply do not want to die. The importance and threat of the far right is recognised while this left, never slow to denounce the fascist threat everywhere else, has minimised, glossed over and treated it as inconsequential. All these failures flowing from the initial failure to understand the war as an imperialist one in which socialists should support neither side.

Both publications proffer incomplete and confused plans for ending the war, both of which appear to treat the Russian view of how it should end as secondary to their own.

What they both do, is treat the question of NATO membership as central, yet another vital element the pro-imperialist warmongers have treated as some sort of Russian excuse. “Land for [Nato] membership is the only game in town, everyone knows it”, says one senior western official quoted by the FT. “Nobody will say it out loud . . . but it’s the only strategy on the table.” On the other hand the FT quotes a senior Ukrainian official as stating that “I don’t think Russia would agree to our participation in Nato.”

The gung-ho Economist supports Ukrainian NATO membership but simply glosses over the acknowledged risk – ‘If Russia struck Ukraine again, America could face a terrible dilemma: to back Ukraine and risk war with a nuclear foe; or refuse and weaken its alliance around the world.” It fails to notice that the US has made a choice on NATO membership already (refusing immediate admission) and simply elides the risk by claiming that a choice of not giving membership would entail Ukraine’s defeat, which ‘would be much worse.’ What could be worse than a world war between two states armed to the teeth with nuclear weapons is not explained, but this, apparently, is the future promised by the prominent publication of Western imperialism.

For the moment, The Economist and Financial Times still support the war, with the former seeking to redefine victory as less than before. However it ends, the war will have resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands with many more wounded; much of Ukraine will have been destroyed; the Ukrainian rump state will be weaker, more corrupt and more subject to imperialist predation than before; the political division within the former Ukrainian working class will have been immeasurably strengthened; and both NATO and the reactionary Russian regime will remain.

These are the already known inevitable results of the war that those leftists who think victory for one band of capitalist robbers is better than the other have to justify. Socialists will remain implacably opposed to both and will not entertain the claims of these leftist pretenders that after the fighting is over they will go back to opposing NATO or Putin.

Back to part 1

Forward to part 3

Russian Red Lines

Posted on September 15, 2024 by irishmarxism

_{Photo: Cemetery in Mykolaiv, southern Ukraine, Bulent Kilic/AFP via Getty Images}

On top of the fog of war we have the additional problem of understanding due to the fog of the media. Again and again we have been told that the West can increase its intervention because Putin’s red lines are a bluff.

In The Irish Times, its Ukraine correspondent commented (under the headline – ‘Ukrainian long-range strikes on Russian supply lines would likely expose Putin’s escalation bluff’) – that previous delivery of F16s and invasion of the Kursk area of Russia had not ‘triggered the escalation that Moscow threatens.’ The byline also states that ‘Permission from US and Britain for Kyiv to hit targets deeper inside Russia expected to spark closer Moscow link with Iran and North Korea, not conflict with Nato.’

A second IT article states that ‘The US may in the coming days grant the UK and France permission to let Kyiv use their long-range strike weapons, which rely on American navigational data, inside Russia as requested by Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said people familiar with the discussions.’ In the event, we have been told that this decision has been postponed.

The British, in the shape of Starmer and Lammy have been to the forefront in pushing their use, with Lammy rejecting Putin’s threats because he was just “throwing dust up into the air” with “a lot of bluster.” Some voices urging caution have been reported (see the second link above) but no explicit explanation why Putin’s ‘threats’ might be real.

The western media pretends to the truth and objectivity but this whole narrative is suffused with propaganda and illustrative of how an unwitting and unwilling public could be dragged into war. The US and UK threaten to hit Russia with long-range missiles, but it is Putin who issues ‘threats’. The potential for escalation can be ignored because previous Russian red lines have been crossed without consequence, even if many of these red lines have been the creations of the Western politicians and media itself, under the cover of general Russian disapproval and vitriol.

The West threatens these attacks while dismissing Russian ‘escalation’ as if the word escalation is a Russian one, which only its actions involve. It has also been suggested that Russia doesn’t really have any red lines, a view which ironically helped bring about the war in the first place. If there are three claims made about it, it is that Russia carried out a full-scale invasion in 2022 that was illegal and unprovoked. However, only one of these is correct.

Without doubt the invasion was illegal but it was not full scale and was not unprovoked. The head of the Ukrainian armed forces Syrskyi recently admitted that Russia invaded with around 100,000 troops, a force far smaller than the Ukrainian army. Hardly full scale in terms of numbers and therefore in objectives. Russia had for decades made it clear that Ukrainian membership of NATO was unacceptable and represented a threat to its security. The Russian invasion took place because this red line was crossed, and the threat of long range missiles against it is confirmation of why it took this view.

This does not mean that its position is therefore justified and should be supported. The nature of the war is determined by the nature of the forces involved and socialists cannot support either Russia or Ukraine/NATO without ceasing to be socialist. Many in the West have taken this course and in doing so crossed class lines – the red lines that socialists have – to become traitors and enemies of the working class.

Repeated escalation of Western involvement has been accompanied by the claim that previous Russian red lines have been crossed while at the same time stating that they don’t exist. Russian warnings can thus be acknowledged and then ignored, bit by bit habituating workers in the West to further and further aggression and steps towards outright war. This has been clear from before the Russian invasion through NATO expansion into Eastern Europe but still many leftists in the West pretend there is not an imperialist proxy war, a claim more and more impossible to square with each escalation.

Putin, who the media is ever so keen to quote, has stated that in order for long range missiles to strike Russia NATO personnel must be directly involved, on top of provision of intelligence and targeting assistance. This is one reason given why Germany has rejected such action – because it involves NATO in direct conflict in a new way. The risks of a significant step towards world war are obvious, made all the more unjustifiable by repeated acknowledgement by those championing their use that these missiles ‘would have only “a limited effect” on the war as a whole’ and Lammy’s admission that “No war is won with any one weapon.”

Putin has stated that “direct participation” of NATO countries in the war in Ukraine “would substantially change the very essence, the nature of the conflict. This will mean that NATO countries, the USA and European states, are fighting with Russia.” The self-censorship of the Western media means that this statement is quoted without any attempt to acknowledge its truth or even to deny it.

There is a certain amount of irrationality in such a course and a number of ideas have been propounded about it, such as that the US and Russia will have an agreement that certain targets will be off-limits if/when these attacks are carried out. In any case, it is clear that Zelensky and the most rabid Ukrainian nationalists either cannot or will not survive politically without escalation, with their justification that it will bring the end of the war closer through Russian agreeing to negotiations already being disproved.

Ukraine is losing the war, and its only hope is increased US/NATO intervention, which it may seek to achieve through provocations against Russia producing a response that could be used as justification. Just as Ukraine is losing, so is Russia winning, which is why so many of its purported red lines have been ignored while it has continued its objectives of degrading and neutering the Ukrainian armed forces. It has no reason to seek to go beyond its existing approach.

The goal of the US is degradation of Russia, and it has no interest in ending a war that achieves this or makes a significant contribution towards it. At the same time, it has no interest in a war with Russia although miscalculation can play a part in creating one. Its intervention so far has been to prolong the war through military support to Ukraine, without which it could not have continued, and scuppering the potential peace deal that was being negotiated, something given additional support by a recent interview with the US apparatchik Victoria Nuland. If the war cannot be pursued through Ukrainian collapse the US with NATO may seek to freeze it in order to lay the ground for another one at a more propitious time, as it did with the MINSK agreements.

Whatever motives and calculations are being made by the various imperialist elites we can be sure that the fog of the media will not reveal them but provide the gloss necessary for their actions to maintain the passivity and ignorance of their populations. The pro-war left go a step beyond this to prettify these motives, calculations and actions so that they are worse than the capitalist media. They too rely on it to ensure that the real nature of the war is covered up.

Sticking it to the Russians

Posted on August 19, 2024 by irishmarxism

When the Ukrainian regime first accepted responsibility for the invasion of the Kursk region of Russia the justification was that it was simply giving it to the Russians as the Russians had given it to them. And this, as far as it goes, is perfectly true. This will not give its supporters in the West any pause for thought that this equality might mean that both sides are equally reactionary. When one of the early apologists for the Ukrainian state justified support for it and its alliance with Western imperialism and NATO, he said that:

‘To describe the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, in which the latter country has no ambition, let alone intention, of seizing Russian territory, and in which Russia has the stated intention of subjugating Ukraine and seizing much of its territory – to call this conflict inter-imperialist, rather than an imperialist war of invasion, is an extreme distortion of reality.’

He went on to justify the supply of western weapons to Ukraine with the argument that:

‘Since the Ukrainians’ fight against the Russian invasion is just, it is quite right to help them defend themselves against an enemy far superior in numbers and armament. That is why we are without hesitation in favour of the delivery of defensive weapons to the Ukrainian resistance.’

“Defensive weapons” became the loophole through which this support for western imperialist intervention was smuggled in – ‘we must also oppose the delivery of air fighters to Ukraine that Zelensky has been demanding. Fighters are not strictly defensive weaponry, and their supply to Ukraine would actually risk significantly aggravating Russian bombing.’

This loophole has now been ripped apart to reveal wholehearted support for western imperialism, with the provision of main battle tanks spearheading the invasion of Russian territory; ATACMS /HIMARS/ storm shadow missiles hitting targets inside Russia; special forces troops on the ground ensuring their successful operation; attacks on Russian territory including on radar stations that warn of nuclear attack from the West; and now the F16 fighter planes that were claimed to typify a non-defensive weapon. By its own admission Ukraine and Western imperialism is on the offensive

The British Ukraine Solidarity Campaign has been urging its government to supply more military material than it has, in effect criticising one of the most hawkish western imperialist powers from the right – for not being aggressive enough! According to its earlier analysis the war is an imperialist proxy war and they should now be opposing the Ukrainian state and western imperialism.

They cannot because they will not, and they will not because they have decisively placed themselves as the ‘left’ of a pro-imperialist alliance. This formal and informal coalition has far, far stronger partners than them, from the imperialist states it calls on to arm Ukraine to the reformist left that is reformist precisely because it will never break from its own imperialist state. It does not have the political tools to explain its capitulation and navigate its way out of it. It can currently damn this imperialism for its role in perpetrating genocide in Palestine while urging it to greater action in Ukraine, as if it had a Jekyll-and-Hyde personality, a good side and a bad side, that will sometimes play a progressive role in advancing the interests of the working class.

It has hooked itself up to Western imperialism with excuses that by supporting the Ukrainian state it is supporting the Ukrainian people, while it disregards altogether the class nature of the state and of the different classes within it. By this logic we are now witnessing the invasion of Russia by the Ukrainian people. Given that the invasion is led by the most effective units of the Ukrainian armed forces, which are also among the most rabidly nationalistic and reactionary, we should also be hearing its support for the working class Russian conscripts fighting them.

We don’t because the reality of Ukraine has exposed the hollowness of its claims to victim status. It chose to build a large army trained by NATO and to allow the CIA to camp in its territory in order to assist its covert actions against Russia. It chose to seek NATO membership and float the idea of stationing nuclear weapons on its territory.

Whenever it is not urging increased intervention by its own imperialism the pro-war left is dispensing analysis oblivious to its meaning. Even in the paragraph quoted above, it is noted that Russia is ‘an enemy far superior in numbers and armament’. Left to itself, Ukraine would have already sued for peace. That it has not is because of the support of Western imperialism, and just as the war continues because of imperialism so is the nature of the war determined by it.

The Western media portrays the Kursk invasion as an ‘incursion’ even as it celebrates the magnitude of the territory conquered as much larger than that won by Russia over many months in the Donbas. It claims that the Western powers that finance and plan its war; that trains its army; provides the weapons, targeting and intelligence for its attacks on Crimea and Russia, had no knowledge of the invasion. Only the ignorant or stupid could swallow this nonsense. We are expected to believe that Ukraine has not told the US and NATO of its invasion when it is supposedly required to tell them how far it can fire its missiles. NATO helped plan its 2023 offensive, so the idea it has not done so now – peddled by the Western media – simply exposes its output as propaganda.

A western-planned invasion of Russia using US and German armoured vehicles, and British main battle tanks has crossed another Russian red line, just as many earlier ones have been erased. There is no reason to believe that this is the last, while such a course leads to a world war and a descent into hell.

The pro-war left feigns concern for the Ukrainian people while more of its young men try to escape from being sent to the front, recruiter’s vehicles are burned, and it faces into a freezing winter with a power system mostly destroyed. Instead of supporting the end of the war it rows in behind its own imperialism’s increasingly belligerent prosecution of it, using Ukraine as its proxy.

This support for continuation of the war is in the interest of neither the Ukrainian or Russian working class. It is not even in the interest of the Ukrainian state that is now bankrupt, in hock to western imperialism, and denuded of people and territory it will not get back. The Russian state has no interest in a forever war on its doorstep, or any peace deal that sees NATO camped in whatever is left of Ukraine and that is only a temporary respite before another NATO inspired conflict is provoked. Just like the previous Minsk Accords experience.

The only player that has an interest in continuation of the war is Western imperialism, which has no concern to end the bloodshed, as it has demonstrated in its support for the Zionist state in Palestine. But as we have argued, one other minor performer has evinced no interest in an end to the war without Ukrainian victory. Why would its position be any different, having hitched itself to Western imperialism?

The Ukrainian regime is now claiming that its invasion is intended to encourage negotiations, which Russia has said are impossible while its territory has been invaded. The invasion is an initiative born of approaching Ukrainian defeat that it cannot escape, from ‘an enemy far superior in numbers and armament.’ Either Western imperialism accepts this prospect and tries to extract something from it or it escalates and crosses more red lines and brings hell closer.

Socialists should be supporting the end of this war and opposing the supply of weapons and troops to Ukraine and Eastern Europe as a whole. If they continue to support it, their claims to socialism will be a case, not of wearing the emperor’s new clothes, but of wearing the uniforms of the armed forces of western imperialism.

Permanent Revolution (5) – the working class or ‘democratic capitalism’?

Posted on June 20, 2024 by irishmarxism

_{Avi Ohayon/GPO}

As we noted in the previous post, the rejection of permanent revolution in practice is ultimately a result of the abandonment of any view that the working class and socialism are relevant. It is not that the objective prerequisites of socialism do not exist – in terms of development of the forces of production and creation of a large working class – but that this class is not conscious of its interests as a class and never will be. Supporting Western imperialism in Ukraine or supporting Hamas in Gaza is a result.

For defenders of these views, being on the right side of the struggle of the oppressed is enough and everything else is secondary. Other, perhaps ‘nice to have’ factors, like specifically working class political leadership, are relegated to an indefinite future. Socialism becomes something so distant from application that it becomes akin to the promise of life after death.

As far as campaigns go, humanitarian demands raised in solidarity with the oppressed suffice to address the issues, and de facto support is provided for whatever political leadership happens to exist, justified on the basis that it does exist – the oppressed have picked their political leadership and who are we to disagree? ‘Being on the right side’ and ‘supporting the leadership of the oppressed’ become moralistic incantations that are supposed to demonstrate one’s commitment to the struggle while ironically condemning it to defeat. This approach reaches its nadir when it entails support for Western imperialism in Ukraine or Islamic fundamentalism in Palestine.

Identification of the class forces involved and the distinctions arising go missing through talk, for example, of ‘Ukraine’ and the ‘Ukrainian resistance’. Concepts such as class and the necessity for socialist leadership are rehearsed when left organisations recruit young people and provide them with what passes for a basic education in Marxism but are often ignored when real struggles develop.

* * *

Permanent revolution does not claim that certain democratic advances cannot be made by bourgeois forces (or by petty bourgeois ones) in every instance, although in the case of Ukraine and Palestine this is clear. In Ukraine, western imperialism ignores the clampdown on democratic rights by the Zelensky regime including its lack of any constitutional legitimacy. In this it repeats the events of 2014 and provides another example of the rules-based international order being whatever the Western powers say it is.

In Palestine it routinely speculates on what sort of Palestinian regime will be installed once the Zionist state has halted its genocide, with not the slightest recognition of the right of the Palestinian people to select its own government. The leaderships that are touted as potential candidates are corrupt and designed to be weapons in the hands of the Zionist state (including the Palestinian Authority).

What democratic tasks that are achieved by bourgeois forces are carried out in their own interests, which interests demand that real democratic control by the majority of a country’s people is excluded. It is ironic that those who argue that Western imperialism is in effect defending democracy in Ukraine do so when the façade of what passes for democracy is more and more exposed as fraudulent by its policy of support for genocide in Palestine.

In the West the right to protest is under attack as students are clubbed by cops and Zionist thugs in the US, while meetings are proscribed and Palestinian speakers expelled in Germany. In the US the Presidential election is between two equally repulsive senile geriatrics, almost equally unpopular, where it is almost the case that Trump is the only candidate that Biden could possibly beat and Biden the only candidate that Trump will most likely defeat.

In Britain the choice between Sunak or Starmer is rendered fundamentally meaningless since no essential differences are involved so that there is no worthwhile choice to be made. When the limits of capitalist democracy are so blatantly exposed the stupidity of the claim that these forces are defending democracy becomes impossible to vindicate. This should provide the opportunity to tear away the fraudulent pretence that imperialism is in some way the protector of any sort of democracy but this requires putting forward an alternative.

In the 19^th and early 20^th centuries democracy was viewed as tied tightly to the working class movement and socialism so that Friedrich Engels was able to state at one point that the two were almost synonymous. The bureaucratisation of the workers’ movement, reaching its apogee in the Stalinist states, was a product of its incorporation into, and reconciliation with, the capitalist state, either in the form of reforming the state or in the form of ‘socialism in one country’ and its pursuit of accommodation with ‘democratic’ capitalism. In doing so it lost the identification of socialism with democracy.

The associated transformation of socialism into the idea that the capitalist state is the means to socialism, or even the potential embodiment of it, has meant that the central claim of Marxism, that the emancipation of the working class must be carried out by the working class itself, has been buried and lost. This distortion is so ubiquitous it is how the idea of socialism is habitually and unthinkingly understood.

So, in Ireland the idea of a ‘left government’ (of a capitalist state) is paraded as the answer while in Britain the idea of nationalisation (capitalist state ownership) was, in the form of clause 4 of the Labour Party, the totem of socialism. Other forms of capitalist rule, such as authoritarianism or fascism, thus become not just particular forms to be opposed but turn ‘democratic capitalism’ into the ‘lesser evil’ that must be positively supported. What democratic rights that do exist thus become not just elements to be defended but reasons to ‘suspend’ opposition to capitalism and ally and subordinate socialism to the demands of ‘democratic’ capitalism.

These corrupting assumptions makes it easier for many self-declared socialists to claim that the Ukrainian state, Western imperialism, or the Russian or Chinese varieties are today’s forces of democracy, ‘anti-imperialism’ or even socialism. All such claims are what permanent revolution rejects, and the road back to the central assertion of Marxism lies through reclaiming it.

* * *

In relation to Ukraine, permanent revolution means opposition to the Russian invasion, opposition to the Ukrainian state and opposition to the intervention of Western imperialism. Opposition to war thus means organisation of the working class in opposition to membership of NATO and its rearmament.

In Palestine it means opposition to the Zionist State and its genocide and the liberation of the Palestinian people through a permanent revolution that seeks the unity of the Arab working class of the region against their exploiters and oppressors. The liberation of the Palestinian people can only be achieved by the liberation of all the working classes and oppressed in the region, which alone can offer a socialist alternative to Jewish workers and an alternative to their allegiance to Zionism.

In this, we really have no choice. The ‘democratic’ governments and states of the West have provoked a war in Ukraine and their defence of the Zionist state has shown us that there are no limits to the barbarity they will support. Continued escalation of the war in Ukraine only points us to a world war.

Russia and China are no defence against such a war because ultimately their only weapon against their Western enemies is also war. The Russian invasion of Ukraine is proof, as are the repeated threats against Taiwan and the constant provocations of the United States that threaten to precipitate it.

Perhaps it will then be clear – even to the most stupid – that imperialism defends itself, is not interested in those it exploits and is no defender of democracy. The working class, whose members are always expected to fight and die in every war, will face the choice of war or peace and that peace can only come through ending capitalism. Once again it will be permanent revolution to end the war or war to end civilisation.

Of course, we are not there yet, but one product of the war in Ukraine has been the readiness of many in the West, normally opposed to war – as previously in Iraq – to rally behind this one. The fake-left supporters of war are only a small part of this much larger constituency. However the war in Ukraine ends, with some temporary ceasefire or agreement, the conflict and antagonism between rival imperialisms is not going to go away; imperialism itself has no way of ensuring that they do not intensify, and the world will face the possibility of their eventual resolution by way of force, in the way such conflicts have been settled before.

In some ways we are back to Marx, when the working class was not ready then either:

‘although the German workers cannot come to power and achieve the realisation of their class interests without passing through a protracted revolutionary development . . . they themselves must contribute most to their final victory, by informing themselves of their own class interests, by taking up their independent political position as soon as possible, by not allowing themselves to be misled by the hypocritical phrases of the democratic petty bourgeoisie into doubting for one minute the necessity of an independently organised party of the proletariat.’

Back to part 4

Permanent Revolution (4) – keeping the theory, ditching the practice

Posted on June 4, 2024 by irishmarxism

_{The pro-Ukraine Left looking right}

How do we explain adherence to the theory of permanent revolution while abandoning it in practice?

If you read Trotsky’s basic postulates laid out in the previous post, with as few preconceptions as possible, the answer is rather obvious; the theory has been abandoned because it no longer appears to correspond with reality. There is little prospect of a democratic revolution, never mind a socialist revolution, in the near term in either Ukraine or Palestine for example, and, whatever about the objective premises of socialism being present (depending on what one considers objective factors) the crisis of humanity is not reducible to ‘the crisis of the revolutionary leadership.’

The last belief is comforting to the members, supporters and many ex-members of the small left wing groups because it licences their existence and previous years of activity. If the decisive requirement now for a socialist revolution is the existence of a sufficiently coherent and large revolutionary organisation, then building that organisation is key and the hinge upon which everything hangs.

However, reality impinges on even the most dogmatic. When the real world does not conform to what is desired and the agent of change – the working class – has suffered defeats and no longer seems to present an alternative, attempts to escape this take the form of politics based on the view of what should exist – justice and freedom etc. – expressed in terms of rights. However, the material interests that do exist will determine what justice and freedom will entail in the real world, which means that this sort of politics inevitably pretends that the world that exists is not the one we have come to know well.

Thus the right to self-determination of Ukraine (or Palestine), if dependent on US imperialism, will be expressed only in so far as it conforms to the interests of this imperialism. Justice and freedom will exist only in so far as they are consistent with its interests. Relying on US imperialism to deliver any of these because it is argued that there is something worse – Russian imperialism – must ignore its whole history.

The view that pressure from protests will force it to impose a progressive solution has no previous experience to support it and protests become a cry for help to precisely those we need to be saved from. In the case of Palestine, protests demand that US imperialism changes course and supports some sort of Palestinian state while solidarity with Ukraine demands that it drive forward with its current course and provide ever more powerful weapons.

Except ATACMS, HIMARS, F-16s, Bradley’s and Abram tanks are not the weapons of freedom and justice, never mind working class emancipation. Passive acceptance of the unlikelihood of working class action to end the war, resulting in substituting other agents of change, cannot get round the fact that working class emancipation cannot be achieved except by the working class itself. The view that it cannot provide the solution means not that some other agent will provide it but that a different solution will be imposed. In Ukraine this means ‘self-determination’ becomes a Ukrainian state with NATO membership, in permanent antagonism with Russia, with the permanent potential for further war; in other words no solution at all.

This demonstrates that demands such as self-determination dredged up from the past, that appear to have a revolutionary heritage, no longer have the same original rationale or purpose: support for the self-determination of nations in a world no longer consisting of empires and colonies but of independent capitalist states entwined in imperialist alliances usually only means support for one imperialism or another. Ukraine is so clearly an illustration of this that to declare support for it reveals a left not only no longer tied to socialist politics, but no longer tethered to the real world. This is one in which imperialism will do what it always does and the smaller capitalist states will follow.

It is instructive that polls showed no majority in Ukraine for NATO membership for years but that this didn’t stop the Ukrainian state creating CIA stations in the country to spy on Russia or pushing membership on a reluctant people, ultimately enshrining it in the constitution. Ukraine joined in the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 while continuing to signal its support for imperialism through its contingent of troops in the occupation of Afghanistan. While now claiming to be a victim of imperialism, its special forces are fighting in Somalia under the direction of the US. All are sterling examples of the reactionary character of support for self-determination for already independent capitalist states and the consequences of abandoning a socialist analysis that doesn’t confuse the working class with its state.

The demand for self-determination of nations that applied to annexed and colonial countries with large peasant populations, now asserted in support of independent capitalist states that are part of imperialist alliances at war, is not essentially different from the policy of those ‘socialist’ parties that sent millions of workers to their death in World War I. Supporters of the imperialist alliance that includes Ukraine claim that it is fighting a Russian colonial project while the supporters of the imperialist alliance that includes Russia claim they are opposing the Western colonial project of regime change and dismemberment of the Russian Federation. In World War I, Marxists did not support German imperialism because its enemy was the biggest empire and colonial power in the world and the absolutist regime in Russia, or support Britain because Germany was seeking to extend its own colonial plunder and was allied to the decrepit Austro-Hungarian Empire.

The current imperialist war that is being waged in Ukraine is thus supported by what can only be called deserters from socialism who refuse to see what is in front of their eyes – an old-fashioned capitalist war that is sending hundreds of thousands of workers to their deaths, inflicts catastrophic destruction on the livelihoods of millions of others, and binds most of the working class to their own nation, their own state and their own ruling class. Nationalism triumphs again while these apostates dress it up as progressive ‘patriotism’, ‘de-colonialism’ or even ‘anti-imperialism’. What they can’t dress it up as is socialism.

They do not lead the working class in any direction that might advance its class consciousness or create the possibility of a minority becoming aware of the class conflicts going on underneath the war propaganda of the mainstream media. Rather they follow the working class as it follows its ruling class. Their political arguments, such as they are, are essentially no different from the dominant reactionary narratives. One that easily extends from ‘defending Ukraine’ to supporting the West’s military alliance NATO.

In what possible way can the need for the working class to have its own politics independent of, and opposed to, that of the capitalist system be advanced by supporting an imperialist alliance in war on the grounds that it is defending the right of another capitalist state to join ithis alliance? In what way would this be opposing imperialist war and defending the interests of the working class?

This situation can only prevail because there is no significant movement of the working class in the West (or in Russia) opposed to the war so support for one imperialist side or the other is seen as the viable alternatives. Were there to be actions by workers in Western countries against the war the left supporters of the war would be thoroughly exposed. Their position therefore not only arises from the current passivity of the working class but depends upon it.

The price paid by the small renegade left organisations committed to this is that they are not so much the naked emperor as the naked emperor’s subjects. Thus, they continue their attempts to build small ‘revolutionary’ organisations which hide their irrelevance through their complete capitulation to the bourgeois politics of their own country. They swim comfortably in the public mood because this mood is consonant with the actions and propaganda of its rulers and mass media.

What we are seeing is not only a failure to see the relevance of permanent revolution to the conflicts which exist but the process itself in reverse. Not permanent revolution as a general process of radicalisation but an accelerated de-radicalisation reflecting the effect of the defeats of previous decades. From the working class – led by socialism – being the only effective leadership of democratic struggle, we instead are to accept that a rotten and corrupt capitalist state in the vanguard of Western imperialism is the centre of today’s democratic and anti-imperialist struggle. Put like that, it makes no sense at all.

Back to part 3

Forward to part 5

Permanent Revolution (3) – basic principles

Posted on May 25, 2024 by irishmarxism

Trotsky, in his booklet The Permanent Revolution, set out a number of its ‘Basic Postulates’. These include the following:

‘2. With regard to countries with a belated bourgeois development, especially the colonial and semi-colonial countries, the theory of the permanent revolution signifies that the complete and genuine solution of their tasks of achieving democracy and national emancipation is conceivable only through the dictatorship of the proletariat as the leader of the subjugated nation, above all of its peasant masses.’

‘3. Not only the agrarian, but also the national question assigns to the peasantry – the overwhelming majority of the population in backward countries – an exceptional place in the democratic revolution. Without an alliance of the proletariat with the peasantry the tasks of the democratic revolution cannot be solved, nor even seriously posed. But the alliance of these two classes can be realized in no other way than through an irreconcilable struggle against the influence of the national-liberal bourgeoisie.’

‘4. No matter what the first episodic stages of the revolution may be in the individual countries, the realization of the revolutionary alliance between the proletariat and the peasantry is conceivable only under the political leadership of the proletariat vanguard, organized in the Communist Party. This in turn means that the victory of the democratic revolution is conceivable only through the dictatorship of the proletariat which bases itself upon the alliance with the peasantry and solves first of all the tasks of the democratic revolution.’

‘8. The dictatorship of the proletariat which has risen to power as the leader of the democratic revolution is inevitably and very quickly confronted with tasks, the fulfilment of which is bound up with deep inroads into the rights of bourgeois property. The democratic revolution grows over directly into the socialist revolution and thereby becomes a permanent revolution.’

‘9. The conquest of power by the proletariat does not complete the revolution, but only opens it. Socialist construction is conceivable only on the foundation of the class struggle, on a national and international scale.’

‘10. The completion of the socialist revolution within national limits is unthinkable . . . The socialist revolution begins on the national arena, it unfolds on the international arena, and is completed on the world arena . . .’

‘11. The above-outlined sketch of the development of the world revolution eliminates the question of countries that are ‘mature’ or ‘immature’ for socialism in the spirit of that pedantic, lifeless classification given by the present programme of the Comintern. Insofar as capitalism has created a world market, a world division of labour and world productive forces, it has also prepared world economy as a whole for socialist transformation.’

‘13. The theory of Stalin and Bukharin, running counter to the entire experience of the Russian revolution, not only sets up the democratic revolution mechanically in contrast to the socialist revolution, but also makes a breach between the national revolution and the international revolution.’

* * *

The number of ‘countries with a belated bourgeois development, especially the colonial and semi-colonial countries’ has decreased dramatically in the last one hundred years, most obviously with the massive growth of the working class, relative decline of the peasanty and the disappearance of most colonies. Many of the semi-colonies are now important capitalist states, including those in the expanding BRICS collaboration.

It might therefore be considered that the theory of the permanent revolution, which ‘signifies that the complete and genuine solution of their tasks of achieving democracy and national emancipation is conceivable only through the dictatorship of the proletariat as the leader of the subjugated nation, above all of its peasant masses’ is of limited relevance today.

After all, how true is it that ‘the agrarian, but also the national question assigns to the peasantry – the overwhelming majority of the population in backward countries – an exceptional place in the democratic revolution’? Does this no longer apply in many countries? We no longer consider that the question is one of democratic revolution but of socialist revolution in countries with widespread industrialisation and a large working class. Even when Trotsky set out the basic ideas of Permanent Revolution, he was stating that his ‘sketch of the development of the world revolution eliminates the question of countries that are ‘mature’ or ‘immature’ for socialism.’

He went further to say, in the Transitional Programme in 1938 that ‘the economic prerequisite for the proletarian revolution has already in general achieved the highest point of fruition that can be reached under capitalism . . . All talk to the effect that historical conditions have not yet “ripened” for socialism is the product of ignorance or conscious deception . . . The objective prerequisites for the proletarian revolution have not only “ripened”; they have begun to get somewhat rotten . . . The turn is now to the proletariat, i.e., chiefly to its revolutionary vanguard. The historical crisis of mankind is reduced to the crisis of the revolutionary leadership.’

Many who claim to be Trotskyist accept that the theory of Permanent Revolution applies today and also continue to argue that humanity’s crisis ‘is reduced to the crisis of the revolutionary leadership.’

We have seen, however, that despite this, many – if not most – agree to the theory but abandon it in practice. They avoid cognitive dissonance by employing a different set of assumptions that enable the adoption of a different set of outwardly Marxist formulas to the actual struggles that arise and which previously would have been considered to come under the purview of the permanent revolution strategy. Let’s take a look at Ukraine and Palestine.

In Ukraine, the supporters of that state who demand self-determination for Ukraine must presumably believe that the national question is key, and that therefore that the ‘democratic revolution’ is on the agenda, even if this no longer requires an alliance with the peasantry. But if this is so, where is the fight for the view that ‘the complete and genuine solution of their tasks of achieving democracy and national emancipation is conceivable only through the dictatorship of the proletariat?’ Why is support given to a bourgeois political regime and capitalist state when what is required is an ‘irreconcilable struggle against the influence of the national-liberal bourgeoisie’, with the need for ‘the political leadership of the proletariat vanguard, organised in the Communist Party?’

When have the supporters of ‘Ukraine’ ever put forward this argument to Ukrainian workers or those in their own country? When has permanent revolution even been mentioned? Why do they defend the intervention of Western imperialism when ‘the democratic revolution grows over directly into the socialist revolution and thereby becomes a permanent revolution?’ How could Western imperialism fail to be a barrier to such an outcome? Why then do they support it?

The only political explanation is that they do not believe that permanent revolution is relevant, which means that socialism is not relevant and socialist revolution inconceivable and not in any way be a guide to longer term strategy. However, if this is so, the theory of permanent revolution states that there can’t be a democratic revolution either. They can’t believe the statement that in ‘the colonial and semi-colonial countries, the theory of the permanent revolution signifies that the complete and genuine solution of their tasks of achieving democracy and national emancipation is conceivable only through the dictatorship of the proletariat as the leader of the subjugated nation.’

They therefore cannot believe that ‘the objective prerequisites for the proletarian revolution have not only “ripened”; they have begun to get somewhat rotten . . . The turn is now to the proletariat, i.e., chiefly to its revolutionary vanguard. The historical crisis of mankind is reduced to the crisis of the revolutionary leadership.’ If the problem was simply one of revolutionary leadership, why wouldn’t they be offering revolutionary politics?

In so far as the supporters of the Russian invasion advance the same arguments in relation to the democratic tasks supposedly devolving to the Putin regime and Russian state, purportedly justified by the rights of the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics, the same questions are posed to them!

If we turn our attention to Palestine, which is a question of (settler) colonialism, the genocide of the Palestinian people and the role of Western imperialism demonstrate that a revolution is required for their liberation. Why is Western imperialism not their saviour as it is claimed it is for the ‘people of Ukraine’? Why do the bourgeois Arab states not perform the same revolutionary democratic role played by the Ukrainian one? Again, where are the arguments above advanced that this liberation can only come through permanent revolution? A struggle that needs to be fought by the working class, under socialist leadership, ‘on the foundation of the class struggle, on a national and international scale’?

Instead, the debate revolves around a one state or two state solution, with neither having any particular class content, which, in effect, means that they are both proposals for a capitalist state and with no indication that a wider socialist revolution is necessary, in the Arab region or wider afield.

How are we to make sense of this à la carte Trotskyism – ‘God make me a Communist, but not just yet’?

Back to part 2

Forward to part 4

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Sráid Marx

An Irish Marxist Blog

Tag Archives: Russia

Who will follow the road to World War III?

Should we support the Ukrainian Left’s route to victory? (2 of 2)

Should we support the Ukrainian Left’s route to victory? (1 of 2)

A World going to War and the resistance (3 of 3) – a multipolar alternative?

A World going to War and the resistance (2 of 3) – Two proxy wars

Russian Red Lines

Sticking it to the Russians

Permanent Revolution (5) – the working class or ‘democratic capitalism’?

Permanent Revolution (4) – keeping the theory, ditching the practice

Permanent Revolution (3) – basic principles