The war between Ukraine and Russia has again brought out the division that erupted prior to WWI, between social-patriots, and international socialists, the latter gathering in conferences at Zimmerwald in Switzerland, and who adopted as their slogan, “The Main Enemy Is At Home”, as first put forward by KarlLiebknecht. The basic, and, for a socialist, undeniable foundation of this slogan, is that the workers of each country have more in common with the workers of other countries, including countries they are at war with, than they do with their own ruling class. The inevitable conclusion of that fact, for a socialist, is that the workers of each country should refuse to line up in support of their own ruling class, in any war, and direct their appeals, on that basis to the workers of other countries to do the same, and to join with them in turning their guns on the real enemy, the ruling capitalist class.
The social-patriots, to the extent that they are ever socialists, rather than being liberals/social-democrats, give lip service to this idea, but as soon as they are put to the test with an actual war, they abandon it, like rats abandoning a ship. That is what they did in WWI and WWII, and the same is being seen today in relation to Ukraine's war with Russia. The social-patriots try to cover this class treason by sophistry, arguing that the war between Ukraine and Russia is not of the same type as that of WWI. They always have to argue that the specific instance of their class treason is different, to justify themselves.
In respect of the war between Russia and Ukraine, their argument is that its all Russia's fault, because its Russia that attacked Ukraine. But, in every war, each side claims that its all the fault of the other side, that it was the other side that first started shooting, and so on. Socialists have always rejected such playground arguments, and said, we do not care who started it, who may or may not be at fault, because the result is the same that, the war sets worker against worker, and lines the workers of each country up with their own bourgeoisie, a consequence that we have no interest in supporting.
The extension of this argument is that Russia is trying to annex Ukraine, and so this is more like the position of socialists supporting a national liberation movement against a colonial power. Firstly, there is no evidence that Russia is trying to annex Ukraine, as against annexing the Russian majority areas of the Donetsk and Lugansk Republics, just as it previously annexed Crimea. Indeed, one reason that financial markets have not sold off big-time, is that speculators realise that Putin's ambitions are limited to those goals, and that he is likely to achieve them in fairly short order. Its only when NATO, and western media has tried to claim that Russia is trying to annexe the whole of Ukraine, and that Russian troops might get bogged down, that markets sold off more, but that narrative is almost certainly wrong.
The same was said about Russia annexing Georgia, in 2008, when it sent in troops to protect South Ossetia against the war crimes being committed by Georgia, against the Russian majority population in those areas. It didn't try to annex Georgia. Russia's attacks on Ukraine have concentrated on consolidating the breakaway republics, and driving out the Ukrainian Army, and the Nazi paramilitaries that have been incessantly shelling the breakaway republics for the last 8 years, causing 14,000 deaths of people living in those areas. It has followed the NATO playbook used when it tore Kosovo out of Serbia, of, then, using mostly air strikes, and missile strikes against Ukrainian military and command and control installations inside Ukraine. Russia has only a fraction of the troops mobilised that it would require if it had ever intended annexing Ukraine, which shows it never had any such intention. Nor is their any reason it would want to do so, Ukraine, even by the standards of Russia, is a vast geographical area, with 40 million inhabitants. Trying to annex it, and hold it, would be hugely expensive financially and militarily, and for what - as a country it is bankrupt.
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The Nazis Of The Ukrainin Azov Battalion have conducted a scorched earth retreat from Donetsk and Lugansk Republics |
But, let's assume that the claim that Russia seeks to annex Ukraine is correct. Does this change the position of socialists in relation to such a war? No. As socialists, we are, of course, opposed to annexations, and socialists oppose Russia's attack on Ukraine, just as we oppose Ukraine's military attacks on the Donetsk and Lugansk Republics, over the last 8 years, that have killed at least 14,000 of the inhabitants of those regions. But, the fact that we oppose such attacks, does not mean that we, then, give our support to Ukraine – which actually means, and can only mean support for the Ukrainian ruling class and its state. My enemy's enemy is not my friend. Just because the ruling class of Russia and Ukraine fall out, like bandits squabbling in the thieves kitchen, does not mean that we have to pick one set of bandits to support against the other!
What about the clearest example of a situation in which a country is oppressed by another, that of a colony seeking to win independence from a colonial master? But, again, socialists do not choose to support one ruling class – that of the colony – as against the ruling class of the coloniser. Nor do we stand shoulder to shoulder with the ruling class of the colony, in a war against the colonial power, which would be necessarily a war aimed at the workers of the colonial power. In such conditions, we argue for the workers and peasants in the colony to organise independently of their ruling class to fight for their freedom from the colonial power, and that, in doing so, they appeal to the workers of the colonial power for support, for them to engage in industrial action to block war supplies and so on. The reason we do that, is that, even in this most stark of examples, our enemy is not the workers of the colonial power, but the ruling class within the colony itself. If, and as soon as, the workers and peasants achieve freedom from colonial slavery, our strategy, based upon permanent revolution, is for them to turn their guns on their own bourgeoisie, if they have not had to do that already, as in such conditions, seeing the potential of the workers and peasants coming to power, that bourgeoisie invariably abandons the anti-colonial struggle, and itself sides with the colonial power, to save its own skin and property.
“In conformity with its fundamental task of combating bourgeois democracy and exposing its falseness and hypocrisy, the Communist Party, as the avowed champion of the proletarian struggle to overthrow the bourgeois yoke, must base its policy, in the national question too, not on abstract and formal principles but, first, on a precise appraisal of the specific historical situation and, primarily, of economic conditions; second, on a clear distinction between the interests of the oppressed classes, of working and exploited people, and the general concept of national interests as a whole, which implies the interests of the ruling class...
From these fundamental premises it follows that the Communist International’s entire policy on the national and the colonial questions should rest primarily on a closer union of the proletarians and the working masses of all nations and countries for a joint revolutionary struggle to overthrow the landowners and the bourgeoisie. This union alone will guarantee victory over capitalism, without which the abolition of national oppression and inequality is impossible...
Recognition of internationalism in word, and its replacement in deed by petty-bourgeois nationalism and pacifism, in all propaganda, agitation and practical work, is very common, not only among the parties of the Second International, but also among those which have withdrawn from it, and often even among parties which now call themselves communist...
Petty-bourgeois nationalism proclaims as internationalism the mere recognition of the equality of nations, and nothing more. Quite apart from the fact that this recognition is purely verbal, petty-bourgeois nationalism preserves national self-interest intact, whereas proletarian internationalism demands, first, that the interests of the proletarian struggle in any one country should be subordinated to the interests of that struggle on a world-wide scale...
the need for a determined struggle against attempts to give a communist colouring to bourgeois-democratic liberation trends in the backward countries; the Communist International should support bourgeois-democratic national movements in colonial and backward countries only on condition that, in these countries, the elements of future proletarian parties, which will be communist not only in name, are brought together and trained to understand their special tasks, i.e., those of the struggle against the bourgeois-democratic movements within their own nations. The Communist International must enter into a temporary alliance with bourgeois democracy in the colonial and backward countries, but should not merge with it, and should under all circumstances uphold the independence of the proletarian movement even if it is in its most embryonic form..
(Lenin – Draft Theses On The National and Colonial Struggle)
So, even in the starkest example, of a colony, the international socialist position is that we identify the interests of the workers and peasants as separate from those of the ruling class of that country. Compare that with the position of the liberals/social-democrats, and the reformist social-patriots, including those that call themselves Marxists, who talk only about the abstract concept “Ukraine”, or the “nation”, or “the people”, and who, in doing so, sweep over the fact of classes and class oppression within the country.
One of the reasons that so many have fallen into a social-patriotic position on Ukraine is that, for decades, petty-bourgeois moral socialists failed to adopt this position in relation to national liberation or “anti-imperialist” struggles. The Stalinists, who had adopted the Popular Front in the 1920's, and again in the 1930's, after the interlude of the Third Period, of course adopted a position of supporting third world bourgeois nationalists. But, those in the various Left groups in competition with the Stalinists adopted a similar position. In one case after another, they became cheerleaders of various bourgeois and petty-bourgeois nationalist movements, giving them more or less uncritical support, on the basis of their “anti-imperialism”, thereby ignoring the fact that these forces, and governments were themselves, often vile, anti-working-class regimes, and most clearly represented the “Main Enemy” of the workers that oppressed them at home. The idea of building separate, independent working-class organisations in opposition to those forces, disappeared entirely from the program of this petty-bourgeois, moralising left.
Support for “national self-determination” became an easy area of work for tiny sects that had gone nowhere in building large working-class socialist parties, especially after the downturn in industrial struggle from the mid 1980's, but they had always been able to count on a new annual intake of students, who could replenish their numbers to replace those they had burned out and disillusioned, and those students were always more attracted to the single issue campaigns to support this year's chosen cause, rather than the hard slog of work inside the labour movement itself. Attaching yourself to this year's cause of national liberation, be it Ireland, or Nicaragua, Tibet or Kosovo, always played well in the student recruitment stakes.
In referring to defence of Ukraine, what they actually mean is defence of the Ukrainian ruling class and its property. Marxists are, of course, opposed to any attack on Ukraine, but that does not at all require us to become supporters of the Ukrainian ruling class, its state and its army, any more than opposition to attacks on Gaza requires us to be supporters of Hamas! We are in favour of the Ukrainian workers, as described in the above Theses, forming their own militia to fight for their own liberation, not just against any invading army, but also against their own immediate oppressors, the Ukrainian bourgeoisie and its state. It is on that basis that they are best placed to appeal to the Russian workers to follow their example, and turn their guns on Putin and the Russian ruling class. It is a certain fact that, so long as the Ukrainian workers identify themselves with the Ukrainian ruling class, its state, and the NATO imperialism that stands behind it, Putin will be able to use that fact to mobilise the Russian workers behind him, and to isolate any Russian workers opposing him.
What then of Lenin's position on self-determination for all of those nations trapped within the Tsarist Empire for which the Bolsheviks set out support for their right to free secession. Its true, Lenin and the Bolsheviks did argue that the Russian Marxists should emphasise their support for the right of free secession for those nations. Why, and what did that mean? Lenin and the Bolsheviks adopted that position as a tactic. Those nations had been trapped and oppressed in the Tsarist Empire for centuries. The peoples within them naturally looked upon all Russians, including the Bolsheviks with suspicion, if not worse. Lenin wanted to overcome that, and win their support, combining their struggle against Tsarist national oppression, with the struggle against Tsarist and bourgeois class oppression.
By saying to the workers and peasants in these oppressed nations, “we are not like our rulers, we do not seek to oppress you, and to prove it, we will allow you to freely secede, if that is what you want”, Lenin hoped they could win them over to a joint struggle. It was never Lenin's intention to argue for any such secession, or national self-determination of these oppressed nations. On the contrary, his and the Bolshevik position was that they sought not national self-determination, but the self determination of the working-class, and that they sought the removal of existing national borders and nation states, and the joining together of workers across all of them. Emphasising the right to secede was simply a way of trying to persuade the peoples of these oppressed nations not to do do so, that they did not need to do so, because the real solution to their problems resided not in nationalism, not in national self-determination – which would simply replicate their existing problems of being exploited by the bourgeoisie – but was Socialism, and for which, the combination of workers across a significant number of countries is required.
When Germany attacked Russia in 1914, the the Russian liberals and social-patriots argued that it was necessary to rally around the flag and to engage in a war against Germany, just as, today, the social patriots, and social-imperialists argue that its necessary to defend Ukraine – i.e. defend the Ukrainian ruling class and its state – against Russia. The two situations are entirely comparable. Russia, in 1914, was still an economy that was barely industrialised, and overwhelmingly agricultural. As an indication of that, it was unable even to manufacture enough rifles and bullets to conduct the war, leading to its soldiers being sent into battle with pitchforks and other implements. Germany, by contrast, was the leading industrial power, having at least caught up with, and probably surpassed Britain.
Germany quickly overran parts of Western Russia. Russia had already lost territory, in the East, in 1905, to Japan. The Bolsheviks, having seen what had happened to China, as it was carved up by the various imperialist powers, saw the likely future of Russia following a similar course. Yet, the Bolsheviks, did not argue that it was necessary to line up with the Tsar and the Russian ruling class to defend Russia. Indeed, at this point, nor did the Mensheviks, which shows that they held to a more principled position than the social-patriots and social-imperialists of today. The Russian socialists, Bolsheviks and Mensheviks, in the main adhered to the international socialist position of Zimmerwald that “The Main Enemy Is At Home”.
But, of course, this is false on a number of levels. Firstly, it assumes that Russia intends to annex Ukraine, which is unlikely. Secondly, it assumes that Ukraine is lines on a map, and its current state, whereas, Ukraine is actually, all of its people, and those people are divided into antagonistic classes. If Ukraine were again entirely annexed by Russia, it would not cease to exist, as its people continue to exist, just as Alsace-Lorraine passed back and forth from Germany and France. Thirdly, socialists are in favour of doing away with all states. We want to abolish all nation states, and to unite the workers of the world in one political entity, and to have it administered by those workers collectively, doing away with the state itself. So, the loss of one of those states is not a fundamentally determining issue for us, particularly if trying to protect its existence leads to the deaths of millions of workers, or to the end of humanity in nuclear war.
But, the argument is false for other reasons. It fails to mention that Ukraine has been at war for the last 8 years with the republics of Donetsk and Lugansk. If Russia stopped fighting it would not at all mean that that war stopped. On the contrary, it would be more likely to intensify further, and it would also further embolden NATO, and its own expansionist strategy. Moreover, no one is saying that the Ukrainian workers should stop fighting. The slogan of “The Main Enemy Is At Home” does not say that the only enemy is at home. What it says is that the workers should organise themselves and fight for their own interests, not the interests of their ruling class, and rather that they should turn their guns on that ruling class. In 1914, when, following defeats, and as a result of the agitation conducted within their ranks by the international socialists, the Russian troops adopted that policy en masse, and stopped fighting at the front, returning home to turn their guns on the Tsar, it did not at all mean that there was “No More Russia”. On the contrary, it meant that it was the start of the Russian Revolution that removed the Tsar and his despotic regime, and then went on to remove the Russian bourgeoisie and landlords, establishing the world's first workers state.
If we want another example of the utilisation of this policy, then, again, the First World War provides a useful lesson. Germany, as the dominant industrial power in 1914, was slowly winning the war. Trotsky, examining these prospects considered what would happen if the Kaiser succeeded in defeating France, Belgium, Italy and so on, and, thereby annexed them, forming a huge European state. That was the goal both of Germany and France, as both were faced with the reality that they needed such a large European state to compete with the existing industrial power of Britain, and more specifically, the emerging power of the huge US state. As Trotsky put it,
“Capitalism has transferred into the field of international relations the same methods applied by it in “regulating” the internal economic life of the nations. The path of competition is the path of systematically annihilating the small and medium-sized enterprises and of achieving the supremacy of big capital. World competition of the capitalist forces means the systematic subjection of the small, medium-sized and backward nations by the great and greatest capitalist powers. The more developed the technique of capitalism, the greater the role played by finance capital, and the higher the demands of militarism, all the more grows the dependency of the small states on the great powers. This process, forming as it does an integral element of imperialist mechanics, flourishes undisturbed also in times of peace by means of state loans, railway and other concessions, military-diplomatic agreements, etc. The war uncovered and accelerated this process by introducing the factor of open violence. The war destroys the last shreds of the “independence” of small states, quite apart from the military outcome of the conflict between the two basic enemy camps.”
In other words, just as competition leads to monopoly and ever larger production, so too it requires ever larger single markets, economies and states. For Marxists, this is historically progressive, and something we welcome as it also creates the conditions for Socialism. Its interesting that in this article, Trotsky does not at all give any succour to the petty-bourgeois, liberal idealists' concepts and slogans in relation to “national self-determination”, instead pointing out, in harsh terms, that, whatever principles of such like are advanced, the actual borders will be determined by the objective material reality of military might! And,
“If this “right” must be – through revolutionary force – counterposed to the imperialist methods of centralization which enslave weak and backward peoples and crush the hearths of national culture, then on the other hand the proletariat cannot allow the “national principle” to get in the way of the irresistible and deeply progressive tendency of modern economic life towards a planned organization throughout our continent, and further, all over the globe. Imperialism is the capitalist-thievish expression of this tendency of modern economy to tear itself completely away from the idiocy of national narrowness, as it did previously with regard to local and provincial confinement. While fighting against the imperialist form of economic centralization, socialism does not at all take a stand against the particular tendency as such but, on the contrary, makes the tendency its own guiding principle.”
(ibid)
So, Trotsky, asks what the international socialist response would then be to Europe being conquered by the Kaiser's Germany, and the consequent annexation of the defeated states. Would we demand, as with the implication of the liberal placard at the Ukraine demonstration, that all the old states be reborn, that whole new borders be established once more. Certainly, of course, that is the logic of the position of the sovereigntists and nationalists, such as those that argued for Brexit, and who would like to break up the rest of the EU along with it. And, it is ironic that all of those petty-bourgeois moral socialists and liberals, who have been effervescent in opposition to those sovereigntists and nationalists, now find themselves adopting exactly the same position as “idiot anti-imperialists”, now opposing Russian imperialism, and uncritically supporting the Ukrainian ruling class and its state, and the Nazi paramilitaries of the Azov Battalion allied with it! Its perhaps, similarly fitting that many of them were also prominent supporters of Starmer, who has also now become the most hard line, sovereigntist, and reactionary nationalist Leader the Labour Party has ever had!!!
But, it most certainly is not the position of international socialism, as Trotsky explains.
“Let us for a moment grant that German militarism succeeds in actually carrying out the compulsory half-union of Europe, just as Prussian militarism once achieved the half-union of Germany, what would then be the central slogan of the European proletariat? Would it be the dissolution of the forced European coalition and the return of all peoples under the roof of isolated national states? Or the restoration of “autonomous” tariffs, “national” currencies, “national” social legislation, and so forth? Certainly not. The program of the European revolutionary movement would then be: The destruction of the compulsory antidemocratic form of the coalition, with the preservation and furtherance of its foundations, in the form of complete annihilation of tariff barriers, the unification of legislation, above all of labour laws, etc. In other words, the slogan of the United States of Europe – without monarchies and standing armies – would under the indicated circumstances become the unifying and guiding slogan of the European revolution.”
This puts the concept of national self-determination in its context as far as international socialism is concerned, as against the primacy that is given to it by the petty-bourgeois moralists, who have lapsed into petty-bourgeois nationalism and sovereigntism, which inevitably has turned them into bourgeois defencists, defenders of the existing ruling class in each nation, and consequently advocates of workers of each nation lining up behind their respective ruling class, just as the social-patriots did in World War I. Trotsky answers them.
“Social-patriotism which is in principle, if not always in fact, the execution of social-reformism to the utmost extent and its adaptation to the imperialist epoch, proposes to us in the present world catastrophe to direct the policy of the proletariat along the lines of the “lesser evil” by joining one of the warring groups. We reject this method. We say that the European war, prepared by the entire preceding course of development, has placed point-blank the fundamental problems of modern capitalist development as a whole; furthermore, that the line of direction to be followed by the international proletariat and its national detachments must not be determined by secondary political and national features nor by problematical advantages of military preponderance of either side (whereby these problematical advantages must be paid for in advance with absolute renunciation of the independent policy of the proletariat), but by the fundamental antagonism existing between the international proletariat and the capitalist regime as a whole.
This is the only principled formulation of the question and, by its very essence, it is socialist-revolutionary in character. It alone provides a theoretical and historical justification for the tactic of revolutionary internationalism.”
No To War – Disband NATO – The Main Enemy Is At Home – Workers of The World Unite
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