My attention was drawn to this statement by the self-styled Executive Bureau of The Fourth International, in a comment by Coatesy that was initially about Paul Mason putting himself forward as a Labour candidate in Stretford and Urmston. The reality is, of course, that there is no such thing, currently as The Fourth International, other than as an idea. Even in Trotsky's day, it really existed as nothing more than that, and quickly illustrated that by descending into fractious warring tribes of small sects, of petty-bourgeois. Even Marx's First International could boast larger numbers of actual workers' organisations, as certainly could the Second International, and the Third International came into existence already with the membership of millions of workers across the globe, as well as the backing of the USSR. Nothing of the kind can be claimed for any of the contending Fourth Internationals, let alone potential Fifth Internationals. They amount to nothing more than vanity projects.
But, I am primarily concerned with the position on Ukraine, and the demands listed by Coatesy from the statement. As I pointed out in my response to him, in fact, the demands amount to nothing more than a bourgeois-democratic wish list, than any kind of Marxist programme of action. Absent from it, as is typical with the politics of such petty-bourgeois moralists and idealists, is any proletarian class content or class analysis.
My initial comment was in response to his post supporting Paul Mason, in which he wrote,
“in the case of Ukraine one can only begin by siding with the people who are the victims of Putin and back their call to have the means to repel the invasion from whatever quarter they can find it”,
which was intended to defend Mason against charges that his warmongering and pro-NATO rhetoric could create a dynamic leading to thermonuclear war.
As I pointed out this Shachtmanite application of “practical politics” is necessarily opportunist and dangerous, as all such “practical politics” turns out to be. It is completely ungrounded in any kind of class analysis, concept of dialectics, or adherence to principle. Its fundamental method, as demonstrated, here, is that of lesser-evilism, and the idea that “my enemy's enemy is my friend”. It is the kind of approach that Trotsky slammed in his article “Learn To Think”.
In that article, Trotsky distinguishes, on the basis of class, different types of state, imperialist states, workers' states, and oppressed states. The Shachtmanites, of course, refused to defend the deformed workers' state in the USSR, and they ended up siding with “democratic imperialism” against fascist imperialism and against the USSR. Trotsky's argument was to set out that Marxists do not support imperialism in its “democratic mask”, as against “fascist imperialism”, but continue to apply the international socialist principle of “The Main Enemy Is At Home”, and illustrates this by an example in which workers in fascist Italy would support arms going to French Algeria, even though that would undermine the war effort of “democratic” France.
In so far as the argument put by Paul Mason and Coatesy – let alone the openly pro-imperialist arguments of people like the AWL – is not just NATO apologism, it is fundamentally based upon the idea of lesser-evilism (see my posts Paul Mason Strains on a Gnat, and Swallows A Camel), and “My Enemy's Enemy Is My Friend”. It ignores the class character of the Ukrainian regime, its relation to NATO, and the nature of its war. Even were that war one of “national liberation”, as the Shachtmanites have tried to claim, it is no part of the Marxist programme to support every such struggle, but only to support the truly revolutionary forces engaged in such struggles, and that most certainly does not include the Ukrainian oligarchs and ruling class, its corrupt government, the Nazis of the Azov Battalion, or the NATO imperialism that stands behind it!
If the argument put forward by Coatesy, and the NATO apologists were applied consistently, then they would end up supporting all sorts of reactionary movements, as well as the involvement of reactionary forces in every such conflict on the basis of the idea that those struggling for self-determination, should be free to “back their call to have the means to repel the invasion from whatever quarter they can find it”. The opportunist nature of that approach is illustrated by the fact that, in the past, of course, they did not back “self-determination”, because they, rightly, saw the reactionary nature of those involved, and so, instead, wrongly, continued to back “democratic-imperialism”. Yet, as I pointed in my initial comment,
“Does “practical politics” and lesser-evilism, in the face of the requirement to “do something” mean that its justifiable for workers to ally themselves with any such reactionary force to meet their immediate requirements on the basis that “my enemy’s enemy is my friend”?
Should Palestinians, for example, be complemented for, in the past, looking to a Saddam Hussein to support them against an expansionist Israeli state, or to Hezbollah, or Iran? Should they, today, as the Israeli state not only bombs and bludgeons Palestine, but also assassinates even Western journalists for daring to report on events, look to, for example, the Russian bourgeoisie to provide them with “the means to repel the invasion from whatever quarter they can find it”?”
The following posts are based upon my response to Coatesy, now with the opportunity to flesh that out, and, also, is based on my further responses to the NATO-imperialist lackey Jim Denham of the social-imperialist AWL.
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