Learn To Think
Another example of this is given by Trotsky, in a different version and context, in his 1938 article “Learn To Think”. In it, Trotsky discusses what the attitude would be in a war between a fascist Italy, and bourgeois-democratic France, and where, in the context of a liberation struggle by Algeria, Italy sought to weaken France, by sending arms to the Algerians. The workers in both Italy and France, uphold the principle that “The Main Enemy Is At Home”, and so continue their struggle against their own governments, however, the Italian workers would not seek to prevent arms being sent to the Algerians, even making an exception to any strike to do so, if necessary, whereas the French workers would seek to block arms being sent to French troops trying to suppress the Algerians. But, Trotsky also makes clear that this is not all.
“Does this not signify, however, that the Italian workers moderate their struggle in this case against the fascist regime? Not in the slightest. Fascism renders “aid” to the Algerians only in order to weaken its enemy, France, and to lay its rapacious hand on her colonies. The revolutionary Italian workers do not forget this for a single moment. They call upon the Algerians not to trust their treacherous “ally” and at the same time continue their own irreconcilable struggle against fascism, “the main enemy in their own country”. Only in this way can they gain the confidence of the rebels, help the rebellion and strengthen their own revolutionary position.”
In other words, what this really amounts to is the Italian workers making clear to the Algerian workers and peasants that it is they that are providing them with this support, and not the fascist Italian government, which has its own predatory ambitions. As Trotsky says, he framed it in this way specifically to illustrate that it is not a matter of whether it is imperialism in a fascist or democratic mask that is decisive. It could have been applied the other way around, with a democratic France offering aid to an Italian colony in rebellion, for example, Libya. The French workers would likewise have warned the Libyans not to trust “democratic” France, which had its own predatory ambitions. That is fully consistent with Trotsky's arguments in relation to the Balkan Wars, where he argued that any involvement by the big powers, however much they claimed it was to bring about liberation, was to be opposed, because it was, in reality, about their own ambitions. Again, its important to note that Trotsky, whilst talking about this supply of arms under workers control, does not talk about an actual military intervention, over which there can be no such workers control.
Had it been the case that Italy were proposing an actual military intervention in Algeria, in support of its “liberation”, then the Italian workers would have had to oppose it. As Trotsky put it in opposing such interventions in the Balkans,
“Democracy has no right, political or moral, to entrust the organisation of the Balkan peoples to forces that are outside its control – for it is not known when and where these forces will stop, and democracy, having once granted them the mandate of its political confidence, will be unable to check them.”
(The Balkan Wars)
And that is the case, whether those intervening in the name of such “liberation from above” are fascist imperialists or democratic imperialists. Socialists could not look to democratic-imperialist Britain to liberate the Falklanders from the occupation of the fascistic Argentine regime, because they had no control over it, and never can exercise control over the capitalist state. It is relevant in the case of the Russian interventions in South Ossetia, Crimea, and DPR/LPR, on the same basis, just as it applies to opposition to NATO intervention in Kosovo, Iraq, Libya and so on.
A false application of the argument given by Trotsky, here, is used by Oakland Socialist, in the US. He compares Ukraine, today, with Algeria in Trotsky's example. That is clearly false, because Algeria was a French colony, whereas Ukraine is an independent capitalist state. Indeed, not just an independent capitalist state, but one that has put itself firmly in the camp of NATO imperialism, which provides it with massive military and intelligence support, including satellite intelligence, cyber warfare undertaken against Russia, a huge economic warfare conducted against Russia, and any country that does not oppose it, as well as a massive propaganda war conducted by western media.
A more appropriate comparison in that regard would be the situation of a weak capitalist power such as Russia, in 1914, up against the might of Germany, as the world's most developed industrial power. Germany sought to conquer Russia, and to take territory from it. Using the arguments of the social-patriots, today, in relation to Ukraine, socialists should have argued for the defence of Russia. Did they? Absolutely, not. In 1914, even the majority of Mensheviks argued that "The Main Enemy Is At Home", and so for opposition to a defencist position.
The Mensheviks changed their position after the 1917 February Revolution, and argued for bourgeois defencism, as did Stalin, Zinoviev and Kamenev. But, Lenin fumed at this social-patriotic position - the same position that the social-patriots argue today in relation to Ukraine. In The History of the Russian Revolution, Trotsky quotes the many frantic telegrams that Lenin sent, saying that he would split the party rather than accept this social-patriotism.
The point that Trotsky is making in Learn To Think, is that we do not determine our position on the basis of putting a minus sign wherever our opponents put a plus sign. We do not operate on the basis of either lesser-evilism or "My enemy's enemy is my friend." But that is exactly what Oakland Socialist and all the other social-patriots and social-imperialists do in relation to Ukraine, and so end up becoming idiot anti-imperialists, when it comes to opposing Russia.
In the same way that the third campists of the SWP, previously, on the basis of their opposition to US imperialism, saw enemies of the US (Hamas, Hezbollah etc.) as being their friend, so now, the third campists of the AWL, and their cothinkers, like Oakland Socialist, on the basis that they see Putin as their enemy, see enemies of Putin, such as Zelensky, the Ukrainian oligarchs, and the Azov Batallion as their friends, and so line up behind them, with their abstract calls for standing with "Ukraine", "the people of Ukraine", and so on, rather than with the revolutionary Ukrainian proletariat.
It fails to distinguish between classes, and the forces that socialists support in such struggles. As is set out in the Theses On The National and Colonial Questions, we do not support such struggles, in the abstract, but only the concrete struggle of the revolutionary proletariat organised independently within it. We do not support such struggles in the abstract, where they amount to struggles of previous ruling classes, or of the bourgeoisie and petty-bourgeoisie, within which the revolutionary proletariat has no independent role or existence.
In China, the workers and peasants were organised in their own revolutionary parties and military units, but the policy of Stalin liquidated them into the KMT, just as Stalin allowed the KMT to join the Communist International. The result was inevitable, as Trotsky had predicted, on the basis of the Theory of Permanent Revolution, and as Marx and Engels had set out on the basis of their experience of the Revolutions of 1848. The bourgeoisie, having used the workers and peasants as foot soldiers, for its own interests, but seeing them as an enemy, turned on them, slaughtering thousands of Chinese Communists in Shanghai in 1927. The same tragedy was to result from the repeated application of the Popular Front strategy in Spain a decade later.
In 1982, Argentina claimed sovereignty over the Falkland Isles, claiming Britain had stolen them more than a century earlier. The claim was bogus, but irrelevant. Its not the job of socialists to act as arbitrators of global bourgeois property claims, but only to defend the interests of the global working class. The inhabitants of the islands, saw themselves as British, and rejected the idea of becoming part of Argentina. Argentina invaded, and occupied the islands, and Britain then launched its war to remove the Argentine forces. Today, the DPR/LPR occupy the same position as the Falklands. The majority Russian inhabitants of these republics rejected domination by a Ukrainian state, which they saw as oppressing them, much as had majority Russian populations in Abkhazia, South Ossetia and Crimea. Many such situations exist, as a result of the legacy of Tsarism and the intermingling of populations, and manipulation of borders over centuries.
Trotsky, makes the same point, in relation to Czechoslovakia, prior to WWII.
“Intolerable social and political conditions must exist for citizens of a "democratic" country to be seized by a desire for fascist power. The Germans of the Saar in France, the Austrian Germans in the Europe of Versailles, the Sudeten Germans in Czechoslovakia felt themselves citizens of third rank. "It will not be worse," they said to themselves. In Germany, at least, they will be oppressed on the same basis as the rest of the population. The masses prefer under these conditions equality in serfdom to humiliation in inequality. The temporary strength of Hitler lies in the bankruptcy of imperialist democracy.”
In 2014, the DPR and LPR, sought autonomy, following the coup in Kyiv of that year, which many of the ethnic Russians in Ukraine saw, as being a NATO inspired attempt to undermine Russian influence in Ukraine, and which meant an oppression of ethnic Russians in Ukraine. I predicted much of what has transpired, back in 2014.
If we apply Trotsky's argument in “Learn To Think”, Russian socialists would not seek to block arms from Russia to the breakaway Republics, but would warn the people there that Russia was doing so only for its own predatory reasons. They would seek to ally with them on that basis, making clear their joint interests as against both the regime in Kyiv and in Moscow. Similarly, the revolutionary workers in Ukraine, would not only make clear their support for the right to free secession of the breakaway Republics, but they would seek to block arms to the Ukrainian troops, and their Nazi allies, shelling the breakaway republics. On that basis, they would seek to forge unity with the workers of the breakaway republics, on the basis of their shared opposition to the government in Kyiv, which would also create the basis for unity with the Russian workers, by undermining the arguments of Putin.
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