Tag Archives: Ukraine war

Imperialist rivalry and the Left (1 of 2)

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The widespread revulsion among many in the West at the genocide in Gaza explains the increasing clampdown by governments on protests against it.  These tend towards opposition against the Western states themselves, whose complicity is too obvious to hide, while the attempts to disguise and justify it by the likes of the BBC etc. reduces their influence.

This comes at a difficult time when Western political and military leaders and their propagandists in the media announce that the populations of the West should be preparing for war themselves.  The latest is a report stating that:

‘The European Commission should facilitate the prolongation of the conflict in Ukraine in order to contain Russia and prepare for war within the next five years. European Commissioner for Defence Andrius Kubilius made such a statement during the annual conference of the European Defence Agency in Brussels.’

“Every day that Ukraine continues to fight is another day for the EU and NATO to become stronger,” he said, calling on European countries to “prepare for war in the next five years” and to move the European economy to ” turbowarfare regime”.’

“We should spend more on weapons, produce more and have more weapons than Russia,” Kubilius added.’

This is the inescapable logic of all those, from the right to the pro-war left, who currently support the war.  It follows from their claims that Ukraine must be supported because it is fighting for democracy – for ‘us’ – against an aggressive imperialism. If it is acceptable for Ukraine to ally with NATO and for workers in the West to support it in doing so, then the same Russian threat exists not only to Ukraine but also to Eastern Europe.  After all, is this not the inevitable course of an aggressive imperialism?  If this imperialism threatens Eastern Europe only the stupid could deny that the same threat would then not also be posed to Western Europe.

So far, some groups like that promoted by  Anti-capitalist Resistance are committed to this view in relation to Eastern Europe; but a war they believe can spread from Ukraine to Eastern Europe has, for similar causes, no rationale not to spread from Eastern Europe to Western Europe.  This means that there is no reason not to support their own states in this future war and accept the preparations necessary to fight it, those demanded by the EU Commissioner for Defence.

Since most of the Western left has failed to oppose the war it is therefore politically disarmed against the bellicose demands for rearmament by their own capitalist states.  This is true both of those who pretend that the war by Ukraine is one of national liberation and of those who believe it is an imperialist proxy war and a war of national liberation at the same time.  The latter simply import into their position the contradiction that the real world outside damns in the former.

Now, along comes Donald Trump to make it clear that imperialist rivalry really is aggressive by its nature, including the Western variety.  The attempt therefore to claim that it is the Russian variety that is solely responsible for war must explain in what way it is not just one instance of a world-wide phenomenon; why the expansion of NATO to include Ukraine is not central to the cause of the war; why Ukraine should be supported when its criticism of Israel has been that it hasn’t provided it with weapons – something now being rectified; why support should be given to the Western variety of imperialism when it is participating in genocide in Palestine; and most importantly, why opposition to the invasion requires support for the alliance of Ukraine and Western imperialism.

Of course, the pro-war left opposes Trump, but more as an anomaly – rather like others in the bourgeoisie media – who will highlight the differences but ignore the continuities with the previous Biden administration.  However, some of these commentators have already admitted that what stands out about Trump is his open espousal of the same principles as his predecessors without the hypocritical rhetoric that has usually accompanied it.  He is as much a product of Western bourgeois democracy that the pro-war left defends as the Obamas and Bidens.

Trump’s threat of ethnic cleansing will compete against Biden’s genocide for barbarity.  Sanctions and creeping economic war against China started under Trump but were maintained and expanded by Biden.  Trump’s threat to make Europe pay for the war in Ukraine follows Biden’s existing imposition of its costs on Europe through sanctions, blowing up European infrastructure, and selling it more expensive energy and lots of US weapons.

Trump is evidence of there being more than one way to pursue US primacy.  Of course, this doesn’t mean there isn’t a difference, but it is necessary not to limit opposition only to them.  The petty bourgeois character of the left is exposed by its seizing on such differences to drop principled opposition to other bourgeois forces and ally with them in opposition to what is called the far-right or fascism.  This includes the same forces whose rule led to the growth of the far-right in the first place.  We see this process again and again in support for the Democrats in the US, Macron in France, and Starmer’s Labour Party in Britain.  In Ireland it is Sinn Fein that is supposed to be central to a left alternative despite its record in office in the North of the country.

All these have failed, or will fail, because these forces are not an alternative to what is called the far-right, which in many cases is just the further right.  These far-right formations represent, or are composed of, the reactionary sections of the petty bourgeoisie with their narrow nationalist ideas that must inevitably under current conditions gravitate to those they seek to replace, or shift their ground to achieve the same outcomes with different methods.  The accommodation that many so-called centrist bourgeois formations are making with the far-right should be all the evidence needed that the dividing line is not some notion of a more and more discredited bourgeois democracy against right wing populism and authoritarianism but between the working class and the bourgeoisie that is attempting to conscript it for war and get it to pay the price in money and blood.

Forward to part 2

Ukraine and imperialism after three years of war (2 of 2)

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Credit: Julian Simmonds for The Telegraph

Western imperialism can keep providing war materiel for years, at greater or lesser amounts as it rebuilds its stocks and rearms, while continuing to encourage the Ukrainian state to hold out for maximalist demands it calls ‘justice’ but which promises only continued war.  This is called ‘fighting to the last Ukrainian’.  However, the problem with this is obvious – you eventually get to the last Ukrainian.

This is obviously not in the interests of the Ukrainian state, so if Western imperialism risks uncontrollable war if it further escalates its intervention, Ukraine risks complete devastation if it continues on its present course. Equally obviously, the war will not reach this stage because there will be too many Ukrainians who will have no intention of joining the queue to be the last one to die.  We already see this in the numbers of especially young men getting out of the country; in the number avoiding military recruitment and coming into conflict with the military recruiters, and the massively increased desertions from the army.

More and more Western politicians are calling for the age of mobilisation of men to be reduced from 25 to 18, which has been resisted by the Zelensky regime.  He claims that he needs more weapons for any mobilisation while the warmongers in the West say that more troops are necessary to wield them. Zelensky is acutely aware of the unpopularity of sending Ukraine’s youngest generation to their death: the previous mobilisation was not completely successful while the very need for another is proof of the massive number already killed.

The underlying problem is that Ukraine has relatively few under-25s due to the sharp decrease in birthrates in the 1990s, a consequence of the shock of the collapse of the Soviet Union and introduction of capitalism.  If all the other cohorts of men have been exhausted, the mobilisation of the youngest does not promise victory but future demographic collapse, caused by death and absence of the most fertile cohorts of the population.  Volodymyr Ishchenko, quoted in the previous post states that ‘according to the latest UN forecast, by the end of the century, the Ukrainian population is going to decrease to 15 million from the 52 million that Ukraine had in 1992 after the disintegration of USSR. This is not even the most pessimistic scenario.’  Demographic forecasts are uncertain but the probability of a greater number of war casualties than that admitted by the Ukrainian state makes it more likely the most pessimistic forecasts are the more accurate.

So what are we to make then of the repeated calls of the pro-war left that we should recognise Ukrainian ‘agency’?  What agency?  That of the Zelensky regime?  Does this left support his current refusal to draft the youngest or will it support his change of mind, or will it support whatever the regime decides to do, whatever that is?  In the latter case the demand for support for Ukrainian agency is actually a demand to deny one’s own; in the case of another mobilisation, to surrender it to the demands of Western imperialism.

In defending Ukrainian agency, this left in reality denies the agency of Western imperialism – of its own ruling class and its state. In this, the supporters of Ukraine and its Western sponsors make the same error (if you can call it that) as the supporters of Russia – they identify the interests of the working class with that of their state.  One or other of these states become the defender of the working class on the world stage, which condemns the working class of their particular saviour to complete subordination.

The consequence is that the working class is no longer a world class and socialism is no longer international, having in effect been subordinated to one or other nationalism.  Hence the prominence of ‘self-determination’ in the discourse of each – a nationalist demand unrelated to the policy of Lenin but a declaration of support to already independent capitalist states in an inter-imperialist war.

Volodymyr Ishchenko has interesting things to say about the power of this nationalism in Ukraine. He.states that ’There are multiple indications that the enthusiasm of 2022 was pretty fragile, and it is not the first time that we see this kind of dynamic. After the 2004 Orange revolution and the EuroMaidan revolution of 2014, people have had high expectations that quickly gave way to disappointment. A similar dynamic happened after the election of Zelensky in 2019 and then in 2022. One of the lines of interpretation is that those events were the manifestation of the rise of the Ukrainian Nation, according to a very linear teleological dynamic, as an ultimate culmination of the national liberation struggle.’  

He goes on to say – ‘the actual desire to sacrifice oneself for the state is very low’, introducing the key missing element by noting that ‘the class issue is very important because conscripts will come primarily from the lower classes, from the villages. Mainly, from among the poor people who could not bribe the recruitment officers . . . It is really difficult to argue that the war is still a kind of “people’s war” if the majority of Ukrainian men actually do not want to fight.’ 

Of the role of the working class, which is the agency that should concern socialists, he is much more honest than the pro-war left that avoids it – by substituting the agency of the state for it – ‘The working class cannot play a role in the current situation. The labor movement in Ukraine was weak well before the war. The last really massive political strike was by Donbas miners in 1993. They demanded the autonomy of Donbas and closer relations with Russia, ironically.’  So much for a Ukrainian take on Ukrainian agency.

In the previous episodes in 2004 and 2014 the Ukrainian people were lied to by all factions of the oligarchy and their foreign backers with the result that the drive towards NATO precipitated the current invasion.  Ukraine is losing and the longer the war continues the greater the loss – this is reality and not the bellicose propaganda of the British, whether from Starmer on his visit to Kyiv or from that county’s pro-war leftists.  Just as it was Boris Johnson who helped torpedo the early Istanbul negotiations that might had ended the war, so has Starmer turned up to make nonsensical promises of a 100 year partnership and £3bn a year in military aid “for as long as it takes.”  As a practised purveyor of untruth, we can be confident that this is another lie.

Russia too has good reason to seek an end to the conflict but too little reason to permit it to involve Western troops in unoccupied Ukraine, which would be both a permanent threat to it and incentive to whatever reactionary regime surfaces in Ukraine to provoke another war.  In such a case Western troops would immediately be involved, triggering a European-wide war that would quickly involve the US in defence of its European imperialist vassals.

Russia is also suffering from sanctions and the freezing of its assets, including $300bn in the EU, even if it has surprised the West by not collapsing and continuing to grow its economy.  However it is suffering from high inflation and high interest rates, which will hamper further growth.  It has survived as well as it has by measures it took following the first Western sanctions in 2014, which have involved increased state direction of the economy and diversification of markets, especially for its energy exports, some of which still go to the West through third parties such as India..

The change in the distribution of available productive resources through increased arms production creates its own disproportions. The part of constant capital – machinery, materials etc and labour power used to produce commodities the use value of which does not make possible either the reconstitution of this constant capital or the reconstitution of labour-power can slow down or even lead to the contraction of the economy’s reproduction if it leads to a reduced amount of this constant capital and labour-power.

It is thus not in the interests of any of the parties that the war continue indefinitely.  Its continuation promises a military defeat for Ukraine and thus for its Western imperialist sponsors that only unacceptable escalation could avoid at unpredictable cost for all involved.  Russia has interests to defend that the war damages, including its economy, and it is undoubtedly suffering significant losses, whatever its supporters on social media in the West like to pretend.

In all this the party with most interest in ending the war is the working class, particularly the sons and daughters of the working class dying and suffering as a result of it.  A working class organised to demand and compel an end to it should be the object of the socialist movement across the world.  Unfortunately too many on the left are tied to supporting either Ukraine and its imperialist allies or Russia, and are therefore also tied to whatever deal eventuates from their eventual negotiations, the terms of which will be determined by the interests of the respective capitalist states.

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Ukraine and imperialism after three years of war (1 of 2)

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At the start of last year media in the West was still predicting Ukrainian victory, continuing the theme from early in the war by pointing to its invasion of Kursk and Zelensky’s ‘victory plan’. We were expected to forget the previous claims that accompanied the Ukrainian offensive in 2023, even when it was obviously failing; the repeated claims that Russia was running out of missiles, almost from the time it began using them in early 2022; that the Russian army was increasingly demoralised; that sanctions would turn the Ruble to rubble and the Russian economy would be cut in half, and repeated claims about Russian casualties while ignoring Ukrainian losses.

By the end of the year the media was speculating on how the West must avoid Ukrainian defeat and achieve stabilisation of the front in order to bolster its negotiating position.  Much ink has been spilt on what the West’s and Ukraine’s negotiating position should be, usually with no reference to what the Russians would find acceptable.  On occasions this has been taken into account it turns out that there is no basis for an agreement, on the grounds that Russia will not accept Ukrainian membership of NATO even if it is postponed for ten or twenty years, and no acceptance of a ceasefire that entails Ukrainian rejection of existing Russian territorial gains or limits to its future military capacity to recommence hostilities and recapture them.

Western imperialism is playing its part by continuing to supply weapons to Ukraine and to tighten sanctions but it has played almost all its hand of escalation, and its ability to supply more of the same weaponry is increasingly limited while escalatory risk in supplying new weaponry is considered unacceptable.  With daily advances by Russian forces it is clear that freezing the conflict is the preferred solution.  The point of the war from NATO’s point of view has been to weaken Russia and if possible reduce its capacity to stand against US  encroachment not only in Ukraine but also in Asia, all in order to press against China.

If Western imperialism really believed that the conquest of all of Ukraine is a prelude to Russian tanks driving through Eastern Europe (and consequently threatening Western Europe) it would have considered the risk of escalation of the war through more direct involvement one that already existed.  Despite current rearmament, the European NATO countries are in no position to fight a conventional war with Russia, not only because of military weakness but because of lack of domestic support.  Beside the cost in lives and in terms of living standards, the West’s support for Israeli genocide and repeated invasion of other countries, and potential war with Iran, means its credibility in selling sacrifices on humanitarian grounds is weak.  Already, the number of incumbent governments falling in elections is testament to widespread dissatisfaction to which the war is a major contributor.

The US is not prepared to make up for European imperialist weakness and is not in a position to engage in more direct war with Russia while supporting Israel, for example against Iran, and having a credible and increasing threat employed against China.  Trump’s threats against Canada, Greenland and Panama are testament that any continuing action he approves against Russia will not be for want of aggressive imperialist intentions but from recognition of these constraints on the projection of US power.  Liberals detest him most because he too openly reveals the naked imperialist interest behind the arrogant and hypocritical rhetoric about democracy.  One Financial Times columnist warned (Musk’s war on America’s allies) that if Musk’s support for the Alternative for Germany (AfD) is also that of Trump ‘the west is as good as dead.’ And this is without taking into account the threats to Canada and Denmark, in which even the most loyal lap dogs of the United States are treated with contempt, opening their leaders to justified criticism from their own populations.

Objectively then, Western imperialism faces challenges, not only from without – the failure of most of the population of the world and their governments to support its proxy war – but also from within, as the price of the war imposed by the US on Europe is further exposed by Trump’s threats.  While European NATO countries froth at the mouth at possible Russian and Chinese damaging of undersea cables in the Baltic and threaten direct action, we are supposed to forget the US destruction of the Nord Stream gas pipelines and these same countries looking the other way before calling off their ‘investigations.’

These contradictions should open possibilities for socialists to point out the real nature of US Imperialism and NATO, of the consequences of their governments’ support for the war, and the hypocrisy and fraud that is bourgeois democracy.

But then enter the pro-war left.  It declares that the occupation of Ukraine is a potential prelude to the invasion of Eastern Europe and that the war is one for democracy, forgetting that socialists oppose bourgeois democracy with that of the working class.  They pretend US imperialism can support the cause of democracy in Ukraine but not in Palestine, while we await without baited breath their reconciliation of this claim with Trump’s latest threats.  They support imperialism’s supply of weapons to Ukraine, which they portray as democratic even while it has banned opposition parties, censored opposition media, restricted workers’ rights and called off the scheduled Presidential election.

They do so while claiming that this does not require rearmament, even while European imperialism empties its arsenals, also claiming that no expansion of NATO is involved even while it supports Ukraine in a war that is all about its ability to join it.  It even complains that Western imperialism has been too reticent in supporting Ukraine – ‘the supply of arms to Ukraine has been insufficient and slow’ it says.  The demand is made that ‘Governments, including NATO countries, should provide the weapons necessary for Ukraine to win’ while it is claimed that ‘there is huge pressure on Ukraine by Western Imperialism to sue for peace and accept annexation.’

The article just quoted references the role of socialists in the First World War without having the faintest awareness that it is painting for Ukraine the same ‘stab in the back’ narrative that the Nazis employed in Germany after the war that helped advance their rise to power.  But of course, this left has already denied the role of the fascist forces in Ukraine that even the bourgeois media sometimes reports, and that one Ukrainian leftist has recently explained.

The Economist noted in its last issue that ‘the share of Ukrainians who view Bandera favourably reached 74% in 2022, up from only 22% ten years earlier.’  Volodymyr Ishchenko noted that ‘in France the far right, mainly the National Rally, Le Pen’s party, is way less extreme than those movements we discuss in Ukraine. Le Pen’s party probably doesn’t use Nazi symbols, and has a more sophisticated attitude towards the Vichy collaboration during the Second World War. They’re trying to detoxify themselves. It’s not like this in Ukraine and you mentioned Stephan Bandera, who is glorified openly; even more so, the Waffen SS is glorified, particularly by people in Azov. The scale of extremism of the Ukrainian far right is way higher than the western one . . . Unlike the major far-right parties in the west who are working on parliamentary status, the power of the far right in Ukraine has always been their capacity for street mobilization and the threat of violence . . . we need to think not only about the nominal far-right but also about the complicity of the Ukrainian and western elite in the whitewashing of Ukrainian far right and ethnonationalism.’  To this could be added the whitewashing of Ukrainian nationalism by the pro-war Western left.

Forward to part 2

A beautiful wonderful victory in Syria?

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Photo: OMAR HAJ KADOUR/AFP/Getty Images

The sudden and ignominious collapse of Bashar al-Assad revealed an utterly bankrupt regime so hollowed out that its army would not fight for it, its Russian and Iranian supporters could not save it, and it prepared for its own collapse by reportedly transferring $250mn to Moscow. Its passing is no cause for mourning, but it is no cause for rapturous celebration either.

The overthrow was achieved mainly by the reactionary Islamist Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS) and other militia groups, including the Turkish-sponsored Syrian National Army (SNA).  HTS is the previous al-Qaeda affiliate in the country and its leader, Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, is still subject to a bounty of $10mn by the US while the HTS is considered a terrorist organisation.

This hasn’t stopped western imperialist governments from swiftly moving to recognise the regime.  Why wouldn’t they, since they did so much to enable its victory?  Unlike some simpletons on the left who have welcomed the fall of the Assad regime, the imperialist powers recognise that this involves putting someone else in his place.

Now the Western media is questioning the designation of HTS as terrorist and Abu Mohammed al-Jolani as a wanted man.  The BBC has carried articles – ‘From Syrian jihadist leader to rebel politician: How Abu Mohammed al-Jolani reinvented himself.’  In reality, reinvention is only possible with the connivance of the Western media, such as the BBC itself.

The state broadcaster was only following its government, which has promptly raised the possibility of taking HTS off the terrorism list.  The US also moved quickly to claim that it had made “direct contact” with HTS, as if this was something new, as a start to securing the stability of imperialist interests. The EU announced it would meet the new government to ensure “it goes in the right direction” while threatening Georgia (which has actually had elections) with possible sanctions. It appears some elections are bad and some terrorists are good.

The reported role of Ukraine in assisting the Islamist victory is a pertinent reminder of its role as an ally of Western imperialism, previously in Iraq, Afghanistan, Sudan and Mali.  This may seem unsurprising, but it hardly corresponds to the pretence of the country as an innocent bystander, forced into a purely defensive war.  If Russia is successfully expelled from Syria, how will this advance the particular interests of Ukraine? Where might all the expelled Russian forces be deployed to?

The role of Ukraine is also a reminder how quickly and successfully western imperialism kisses the frog and makes a handsome prince.  In Ukraine the neo-Nazi Azov movement, subject to US sanctions, became freedom fighters when they received US weapons.  HTS is well on the road to such beatification.

Most importantly, the role of Ukraine illustrates the overthrow of Assad as an episode in a wider inter-imperialist conflict that is setting light to different hot wars that threaten to escalate into a single world-wide catastrophe.  On one side, Western imperialism illustrates its ‘progressive’ credentials through support for Islamist reactionaries while, on the other, ‘anti-imperialist’ certificates are endorsed by support for a vile dictatorship, the establishment of military bases on the Mediterranean, and facilitating the robbing of the country by the fleeing dictator.

The left supporters of a ‘multipolar’ world have the inevitable results of this project thrown in their faces – a world of competing and antagonistic imperialist rivalries in which war is inescapable.  Syria is dramatic demolition of the illusions contained in support for a multipolar world within which there are unipolar states.  The multipolar dismemberment of Syria is the multipolar world writ small.

Yet somehow, compared to others on the left, even these illusions seem half sane.  For these others, this world-wide inter-imperialist conflict is so circumscribed and defined by their support for Ukraine that it becomes no more than background noise.  Their effective capitulation to Western imperialism arrives via the road of bourgeois democracy, or the claims made for it, that they extol even as its content is evacuated in reality.  This now reaches grotesque levels in their support for the overthrow of Assad that in linear fashion tail ends Western imperialism.

Even the ideologues of imperialism offer a more accurate and honest view of the HTS than this left.  Foreign Policy notes that they are “cut from the same cloth as Assad” and that protesters against their regime in Idlib who described Jolani as a “tyrant . . . were directed to mass graves of those killed inside prisons—eerily resembling allegations against the Assad government.”

“In Syria it is kind of a monster-versus-monster conflict,” said Aron Lund, fellow with Century International. “Ordinary Syrians don’t have any choice in regard to who rules them. Groups come to their area with guns, and people just have to get along. Depending on who you are and where you are, either Assad or HTS may have pockets of support, but neither side allows any real free expression or elections.”

HTS success was achieved with the assistance of its many foreign Jihadi fighters and was at least partly the result of Turkish and US sponsorship.  It was accompanied by and enabled another invasion by the Zionist state with massive destruction of the weapons and military facilities of the Syrian state.  All this leaves no room for repeating false phrases about ‘self-determination’ as employed in support for Ukraine.  Neither can Islamic fundamentalism be held up as some sort of democratic movement of any kind.

An interview with a Swiss Syrian, Joseph Daher, posted by this left, notes that “We have to face the hard fact that there is a glaring absence of an independent democratic and progressive bloc that is able to organize and clearly oppose the Syrian regime and Islamic fundamentalist forces.”

He goes no to say that “Looking at HTS and SNA’s policies in the past, they have not encouraged a democratic space to develop, but quite the opposite. They have been authoritarian.”

Yet on Facebook, two of the pro-war and pro-Ukraine left said this about the events in Syria:

“Assad is gone! Victory beautiful wonderful victory to see a tyrant crushed like that. Damascus is under the control of the rebels.” 

And:

“The butcher Assad’s departure to Moscow is a great day for the Syrian people and it is hard to conceive of a new government which could be more brutal, reactionary and corrupt. The hope is that the urban movement which nearly brought down the dictatorship is able to take power.”

A “beautiful wonderful victory” for Islamic fundamentalism, one sponsored by Western imperialism and accompanied by another invasion by Israel! 

“A great day for the Syrian people” –how more wonderful could it be?  How greater a day could the Syrian people enjoy than to be subject to the rule of Islamic fundamentalists?

In the interview, Joseph Daher says that ‘Only the self- organization of popular classes fighting for democratic and progressive demands will create that space and open a path toward actual liberation” but that “the main obstacle has been, is, and will be the authoritarian actors, previously the regime, but now many of the opposition forces, especially the HTS and SNA; their rule and the military clashes between them have suffocated the space for democratic and progressive forces to democratically determine their future.”

So where does the “hope” come from that “the urban movement which nearly brought down the dictatorship is able to take power” as a result of this new “main obstacle”?

Daher goes on to say something that the left supporters of Ukraine, and now Islamist rebels, have set themselves against: “To choose one imperialism over another is to guarantee the stability of the capitalist system and the exploitation of popular classes.”

There are many ways of arriving at this, but celebrating the victory of HTS throws all the light you need in order to see the even greater betrayal involved in supporting Ukraine and its war to join NATO.

Who will follow the road to World War III?

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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? (1 of 2)

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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

Russian Red Lines

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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.

See also Sticking it to the Russians

What is bourgeois democracy?

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Most of Europe is involved in a proxy war against Russia, costing billions of Euros and untold lives; untold because the personnel involved were not supposed to be in Ukraine in the first place.  Who voted for the war?

This question sums up bourgeois democracy.

This has not prevented many on the left enthusiastically supporting it.  This left, which normally would not dream of calling a strike without a ballot, has given a blank cheque to its ruling class and its state.  Rather than demand a vote in order to debate the purpose and objectives of the war, they have simply endorsed it and called for it to be supported more vigorously.  I doubt the idea of a debate and vote even crossed their minds, not least because they don’t have an alternative anyway.

The justification, ironically, is that Ukraine is a ‘democracy’ and Russia is not; even though the current president of Ukraine is no longer an elected leader, since his period of office has expired, while the President of Russia actually won an election, for what it’s worth.  In the last few days Zelensky has tried to concentrate even more power in his hands by sacking around half his cabinet.  That opposition parties and media are banned in Ukraine matters not a jot to these people while Russia’s elections are regarded as a sham.  Let’s think about that for a minute and consider recent elections in the ‘democratic’ West as a comparison.

First, we have the new Labour government in Britain, elected with an enormous parliamentary majority by only 20% of the electorate on the basis of not much more than not being the Tories.  Starmer and his colleagues did their best not to commit to any specific policies and have quickly broken promises that they did make – on energy prices and austerity.  No doubt, further measures will confirm this course.  The widespread opposition to genocide in Gaza, reflected in support for some independent candidates, could find no reflection in the choice of government as both Labour and Tories support it.

Second, we have the most powerful bourgeois democracy in the world in which counting the money is a better guide to who will win than the polling of support for the various policies that the candidates claim to support.  The US is possibly even worse than Britain in terms of the vacuum of debate on what exactly parties will do when elected, whether anything they say can be believed and is not just a catalogue of lies.  For every Donald Trump and Kamala Harris we have a Boris Johnson and Keir Starmer.  The main appeal of each candidate is aversion for the other.

When the usual mechanisms for making sure the ‘right’ candidates are selected fail these are ditched and the men and women with money and political power step in to make the ‘right’ selection.  After months of primaries and the votes of millions – 14.5 million in fact – the Democratic grandees and apparatchiks stepped in to ensure that Genocide Joe would not be the Presidential candidate.  In this he was simply the subject of the same machinations that ensured he was the candidate in 2020 instead of Bernie Sanders, who was judged too left wing regardless of the popularity of his policies or of himself.

Even the proponents of bourgeois democracy worry that all this is not sustainable, while certain sections of the left cling to it all the more firmly the more rotten it becomes.  In an opinion piece in the Financial Times, a contributing editor noted that Kamala Harris has given only one media interview and even that not by herself – ‘she seems to think that if voters understand what she will do as president, they will be less likely to support her.’  It notes the irony that, while claiming to defend democracy against the “existential threat” to it posed by Trump, the failure to do what you say you are going to do means that ‘rather embarrassingly, you will be the one undermining the system of representative government.”

The argument of socialists is that bourgeois democracy – “representative government” – is a sham.  How could it be otherwise in a system in which the means of production are controlled by the capitalist class, including the means of communication – of producing ‘the news’ and disseminating it, and the state machinery through which government policies are implemented – thorough its top personnel and the economic structures through which policies can be allowed to work or alternatively are throttled.

A final example of bourgeois democracy in action is in France, where the defeated Emmanuel Macron, having prevaricated for two months, has announced that Michel Barnier has been chosen by him to be Prime Minister.  Despite the New Popular Front having won a plurality of the votes he has selected a leader from the right wing Les Républicans, which won only 6.57% of the first round vote.

The leader of France Insoumise, Jean-Luc Mélenchon has declared that “We’ve been robbed in this election”. It is normally the largest formation that is permitted to form an administration but such normalities are always disregarded when the political establishment thinks that it faces some sort of threat, especially from the left.

The real anti-democratic nature of this move by Macron is not so much the abuse of this Presidential mechanism but what the employment of this power signifies.  The elections were a decisive rejection of Macron and his policies, reflected in the vote for the New Popular Front and in the rise of the far right Rassemblement National.  Yet Barnier was selected preciously in order to confirm and continue these policies.

The front page of the Financial Times explained that the purpose of Macron’s choice was to ‘find a candidate . . . who would not seek to undo his pro-business reforms.’  The fraudulent nature of the far right alternative to mainstream capitalist policies was revealed by the response of Marien Le Pen who is quoted as ‘cautiously’ welcoming the appointment and saying that “Barnier seems at least to meet one of the criteria we’d demanded . . . and be able to speak with the Rassemblement National.  That will be useful as compromises will need to solve the budget situation.”

An analyst from one of the think tanks that litter the capitalist political environment stated that his appointment would ‘help in France’s bid to reassure markets over the economy and public spending’.  “He’s a safe pair of hands known to market participants, known to Europe and the domestic political elite within France”, adding that he would be expected to ensure that ‘Macron’s labour and pension reforms would remain intact.’

So, there we have it.  An overwhelming vote against Macron’s policies is turned, or is attempting to be turned, into an administration that will ensure their maintenance.  It is not the clear wishes of the electorate that must be counted but that of the ‘markets’ – national and international capitalism – and the ‘political elite’ that counts.

For all the hypocritical cant about ‘democracy’ we have yet another example of how bourgeois democracy is democracy for the bourgeoisie.  For the majority, including the working class, democracy does not extend beyond occasional visits to the polling booth in which meaningful choice has often been removed, or when it has not, constitutional devices are employed until these too are insufficient whereupon more forceful measures are employed.

Mélenchon is reported to have called for protests against this subversion of the popular will, demonstrating that, for the working class, democracy can only be enforced and guaranteed by its own actions.  What this action cannot do, however, is democratise the state itself, which is the instrument of the political elite and the markets – the bourgeoisie and capitalism.

The resort to protest is testament to where power for the working class arises and where it must be advanced – in the organisation and mobilisation of the workers themselves.  Elections can measure its strength and level of politicisation but only the workers own organisations can form a democratic alternative to the political elite, the bourgeois class and its state.  This in turn demands that the organisation of the working class movement itself must be democratic, but until some current socialists stop supporting capitalist war in defence of bourgeois democracy they will have nothing but a reactionary role to play in building up the workers own democracy.

Sticking it to the Russians

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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 (4) – keeping the theory, ditching the practice

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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.

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