The Third Camp of the Proletariat
In his Programme Of Peace, written in 1916, Trotsky describes these principles in relation to wars between bourgeois states, such as those taking place at the time under the generic heading of World War I. In it is synthesised these principles that a) we are not proponents of national self-determination, but of the self-determination of the working-class, b) we are in favour of the greatest possible, voluntary association of states, and so of the working-class, and the consequent demolition of borders and nation states, c) in all wars, including those for national liberation, we are partisans only of the revolutionary proletariat, organised independently in revolutionary organisations so as to fight against the forces of bourgeois-democracy, as well as for national liberation (permanent revolution), d) the main enemy is at home, e) our solution to war is not pacifism, or the victory of one camp over another, but the victory of the proletariat, and the creation of Socialism, which is the only lasting guarantee of peace.
The peace program of the bourgeoisie, and of its apologists, Trotsky says, is a program actually of war, of the victory of one camp in the conflict over another. In Ukraine currently, the NATO imperialists programme for peace is a program of war, and the defeat of Russian imperialism, by Ukraine and its NATO backers. That is also the program of the warmongers on the Left, who have become partisans of the camp of NATO imperialism, such as Paul Mason, or those involved in the Ukraine Solidarity Campaign. The latter talk not about the Ukrainian working class, organised in independent revolutionary organisations, but only of “Ukraine”, or “the Ukrainian people”, as though these abstract concepts do not hide the existence of fundamental class divisions in Ukraine, and that what these abstract concepts actually mean is the Ukrainian ruling class, and its state, which is who is really fighting the war against Russia, and backed massively by the military might and economic power of NATO.
This use of abstract concepts such as “the people” is the usual method of the petty-bourgeois liberal who seeks to deny the existence of these class distinctions, in order to line the whole of society up behind the ruling class and its objectives on the basis of nationalist ideology. As Lenin put it, arguing against the petty-bourgeois moralists of the Narodniks,
“we have to conclude that a class-divided society is compatible with a non-class state, with a non-class nation, with individuals standing outside of classes.”
(Gems of Narodnik Project Mongering)
But, its quite clear that Ukraine is not a non-class state, nor nation, but is a bourgeois state and nation, which is backed by the global might of NATO imperialism, which is, and has been for more than a decade involved in a global economic and strategic conflict with China, as a growing economic and military competitor to NATO, and with Russia, which poses no real economic challenge to NATO, but which still has significant military, including nuclear arsenals. That war has been conducted via proxies, such as Iran and Syria, and contending forces within them, as well as by the usual route of trade wars. When the US and Russia, both became directly involved in the war in Syria, I pointed out that this was a qualitative change, opening the possibility of direct war between the two – WWIII. The war in Ukraine is not a war just between Russia and “poor little Ukraine”, in the way that WWI was justified by British and French imperialism as a war over “poor little Belgium”, but is a further qualitative development in that process of proxy war that is moving ever closer to all-out war between these two imperialist camps, a war that will inevitably become nuclear in short order, spelling the end of humanity.
Even the warmonger and supporter of NATO imperialism, Paul Mason, recognises this fact. He talks in his latest missive about “Western arms supplies... and (widely assumed) US intelligence and electronic warfare support.” In other words, NATO imperialism is already massively engaged on the side of Ukraine, which is being used as a punch-bag in this proxy war, to soak up Russian attacks on behalf of NATO imperialism's larger, and longer term military strategic goals. Indeed, this distinguishes the Ukraine-Russia war even from the Argentina-Britain war over the Falklands, because in that war, although again, NATO stayed out of it, everyone knew that Britain was getting satellite information from the US.
As Trotsky writes,
“What is a program of peace? From the viewpoint of the ruling classes or of the parties subservient to them, it is the totality of those demands, the realization of which must be ensured by the power of militarism. Hence, for the realization of Miliukov’s “peace program” Constantinople must be conquered by force of arms. Vandervelde’s “peace program” requires the expulsion of the Germans from Belgium as an antecedent condition. From this standpoint the peace clauses merely draw the balance sheet of what has been achieved by force of arms. In other words, the peace program is the war program.”
(The Program of Peace)
But, the working-class does not need to align with either of these two warring bourgeois camps. Our aim is not to act simply as partisans of one national bourgeoisie against another, as the liberals and social-imperialists of the USC would have us do, but is rather to be partisans of the proletariat, which forms an independent third camp hostile to both the other two.
“For the revolutionary proletariat, the peace program does not mean the demands which national militarism must fulfil, but those demands which the international proletariat intends to impose by its revolutionary struggle against militarism of all countries.”
(ibid)
That the war in Ukraine really amounts to a war between two imperialist camps NATO on one side, Russia/China(?) on the other, is no surprise, because what it signifies, as Trotsky wrote back in 1916, is that the concept of national self-determination, for small or weaker states is a myth, a petty-bourgeois, romantic delusion, just as much as the potential for independence of small firms in a world of monopolies. It is why the proponents of Brexit are reactionary, petty-bourgeois dreamers. Poor little Belgium, itself, of course, had been a vicious colonial power, using the most vile oppression in Africa, and yet, in the world that had emerged, was just too small to survive.
“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 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.”
(ibid)
Lenin and Trotsky, based on Lenin's theory of imperialism, saw the world being divided in the same way it had been in the 19th century, into colonial empires, and annexed countries, but the reality of what Trotsky outlines, here, is that that world was ending, and the age of the huge multinational state was emerging, which was to be seen in the development of the EU, and similar blocs across the globe. Its again what makes Brexit such a utopian and reactionary venture, which already is tearing Britain itself apart, and sees it, on the one hand economically subordinated to the EU, and politically subordinated to the US, a condition that itself cannot be sustained.
The position and fate of Ukraine, today, is comparable to that of Belgium in WWI, and as Trotsky says,
“Belgium still groans under the yoke of German militarism. This, however, is but the visible sanguinary and dramatic expression of the collapse of her independence. The “liberation” of Belgium does not at all confront the Allied governments as an independent task. Both in the further progress of the war and after its conclusion, Belgium will become but a pawn in the great game of the capitalist giants. Failing the intervention of the third power – the revolution – Belgium may as a result of the war remain in German bondage, or fall under the yoke of Great Britain, or be divided between the powerful robbers of the two coalitions.”
(ibid)
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