Paul Mason Strains on a Gnat, But Swallows A Camel - Swallowing A Camel (7 of 8)

The Russian Marxists argued the need to emphasise the right to freely secede, purely as a tactic in trying to win the confidence of workers and peasants in nations that had been brutally oppressed by Tsarism for centuries. But, Scotland, although it is not equal with England, as the experience of Brexit showed, is not, and has not been oppressed by England. Indeed, Scotland, has its own parliament, whereas England doesn't. As far as I am aware, there has been not one fatality in Scotland since the 2014 referendum, resulting from England oppressing it, and nor is there likely to be such. That compares with the 14,000 deaths in the Donetsk and Lugansk Republics caused by the shelling and other military action conducted against them by the Azov Battalion, and the rest of the Ukrainian armed forces, as it tries to prevent them even exercising autonomy, let alone a right of free secession. But, whilst Paul is a prominent advocate of another Sottish independence referendum, and the secession of Scotland, he has little to say about the right of these break away republics to secede, or even the failure of the Ukrainian government to implement the autonomy it committed to in the Minsk Agreements.

Again, Marxists do not advocate separation and self-determination for these breakaway republics either. Our preference is that the workers in these regions seek to make common cause with the workers in the rest of Ukraine, just as we advocate that Scottish workers make common cause with English and Welsh workers, rather than pursuing the dead end of Scottish nationalism, and as we advocate that British workers make common cause with workers in the EU, rather than the reactionary dead end of Brexit. But, unlike Scotland, unlike Brexit, the fact of a continual military campaign waged by the Ukrainian state, spearheaded by the Nazis of the Azov battalion, against the Republics of Donetsk and Lugansk, demonstrates a qualitative difference in terms of a vicious oppression of them.

Given that the Ukrainian workers are being presented, including by those like Paul, as being as one with the Ukrainian government – which is not true, as the 2010 election that saw a majority for the pro-Russian Yanukovich, in a country that has always looked both East and West, is it any wonder that the workers in Donetsk and Lugansk, then find themselves lining up against them. And, as Ukraine lines up with NATO, as its backer, in the same way that Marx and Engels described reactionary nations, in their time, lining up with Russia as their saviour, and especially as even western socialists line up with the Ukrainian government and NATO, is it any wonder that the workers in these breakaway republics, as well as the workers in Russia, are driven into the hands of Putin? As Trotsky put it in 1938, ahead of WWII.

"Fascism is a form of despair in the petit-bourgeois masses, who carry away with them over the precipice a part of the proletariat as well. Despair as is known, takes hold when all roads of salvation are cut off. The triple bankruptcy of democracy, Social Democracy and the Comintern was the prerequisite for fascism. All three have tied their fate to the fate of imperialism. All three bring nothing to the masses but despair and by this assure the triumph of fascism."

(Phrases & Reality, in Writings 1938-9, p19)

And,

"The democracies of the Versailles Entente helped the victory of Hitler by their vile oppression of defeated Germany. Now the lackeys of democratic imperialism of the Second and Third Internationals are helping with all their might the further strengthening of Hitler’s regime. Really, what would a military bloc of imperialist democracies against Hitler mean? A new edition of the Versailles chains, even more heavy, bloody and intolerable. Naturally, not a single German worker wants this. To throw off Hitler by revolution is one thing; to strangle Germany by an imperialist war is quite another. The howling of the “pacifist” jackals of democratic imperialism is therefore the best accompaniment to Hitler’s speeches. “You see,” he says to the German people, “even socialists and Communists of all enemy countries support their army and their diplomacy; if you will not rally around me, your leader, you are threatened with doom!” Stalin, the lackey of democratic imperialism, and all the lackeys of Stalin – Jouhaux, Toledano, and Company – are the best aides in deceiving, lulling, and intimidating the German workers."

(ibid p 21)

That is the inevitable consequence of the Popular Front that Paul and others have proposed. If the Ukrainian workers are lined up behind their own bourgeoisie, if the workers of the West are lined up behind NATO imperialism, then this common front of western imperialism, is seen by the workers of Russia, precisely for what it is, a threat to their own existence. The fact that this threat is manifest already in the economic warfare unleashed against them, and proposed by Paul, and other supposed “Marxists”, in the West, makes that abundantly clear to the Russian workers driving them inexorably into the hands of Putin and his vile regime, in exactly the way Trotsky describes in relation to Hitler above. What Paul and others have proposed is not Marxism or anything approaching it, but is, in fact, the same kind of sovereigntism, and nationalism that they have rightly criticised in others over recent years. It is the same kind of social-patriotism, indeed social imperialism that international socialists fought against prior to and during WWI, and WWII.

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