For Defeat of the Russian invasion.
The statement demands defeat of the Russian invasion, but fails to set out who is to bring about this defeat. The statement talks about “territorial defence forces, civil society organizations, and new forms of self-organization”, but the reality, as the reports now coming out of Ukraine demonstrate, from mercenaries who went there to fight, this is really just liberal wishful thinking, of wanting the world to be the way they would like it to be rather than how it is. As with much of the reporting of the war, it was based upon a huge NATO imperialist war propaganda machine that talked about imminent defeat for Russia, that has now collapsed on itself, faced with the reality that Russia has secured most of the Donbass and Southern Ukraine. The reality is that, where such social forces were involved, they were thrown in with no training, using poor equipment, and used as basically cannon fodder, by the Ukrainian state, and NATO standing behind it.
There is no large-scale, independent proletarian, revolutionary military force in Ukraine, organisationally and politically separated from, and standing in opposition to, the forces of the Ukrainian state as well as against the Russian military. It is, to the extent it exists at all, completely subordinated to, and incorporated in, the organisations of the Ukrainian state, and its military. It is in a similar position to that which Stalin put the Chinese Communists in 1927, before they were massacred by Chiang Kai Shek. Its precisely why Trotsky vehemently opposed such subordination – a position that goes back to Marx's analysis in 1850 – and insisted upon a strict organisational and military separation and independence.
In fact, the forces that have been able to organise within, and come to dominate, that military itself are not those of the revolutionary workers, but those of the reactionary nationalist, petty-bourgeoisie, as represented by the Nazis of the Azov Battalion, and the Right Sector, whose members have been praised by Zelensky, and promoted to commanding positions. Its interesting that, some years ago, the AWL and their co-thinkers, opposed workers and socialists, in Venezuela, joining the PSUV of Chavez, on the basis of insisting on their independence from it, and from the Venezuelan state, yet, here, they are fully committed to liquidating the workers and their organisations, not just in Ukraine, but internationally, via Popular Frontist, pro-imperialist organisations, like the Ukraine Solidarity Committee, into the Ukrainian state, and NATO!
If we look at the position of Lenin and Trotsky, in relation to The Theses On The National and Colonial Questions, the principles behind Trotsky's Theory of Permanent Revolution, and of Lenin's April Theses, stand out. The point was not to simply engage in the limited struggle for bourgeois-democratic rights and freedoms such as “self-determination”, but was to recognise the need to combine any such struggle with the struggle against bourgeois-democracy within the given country, and against its ruling class, as well as against any colonial power, i.e. the primary goal remained the proletarian class struggle, and its basis remained the international socialist principle of “The Main Enemy Is At Home.”
Its on that basis that Lenin and Trotsky and the Comintern did not commit to supporting every struggle for national liberation, or self-determination, nor any old movement engaged in such struggle, but only those in which support could be given to truly revolutionary forces.
"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.”
Note, the “fundamental task”, is not the liberation struggle, or bourgeois-democratic demand for “self-determination”, but is “combating bourgeois democracy and exposing its falseness and hypocrisy”. In so doing, it distinguishes, on the basis of class analysis, the contradictory interests of classes and as against “national” interest”, which can be nothing other than the interest of the ruling class. The idea that these “national” interests are the interests of the working-class and peasantry, as well as of the ruling class, can only be deduced by those who ignore class analysis, and the contradictory class interests that exist within society. In place of a Marxist, materialist analysis of those contradictory interests, it requires a bourgeois, liberal, idealist analysis based upon “abstract and formal principles”.
The Theses continue,
“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."
Ukraine, of course, is not a backward, colonial country, but is itself a modern, independent, capitalist state and so the idea that Marxists should provide cover for its ruling class is even more absurd. Moreover, it is a modern, independent capitalist state that is not only backed by the huge military and economic might of NATO imperialism, for which it acts as proxy, and battering ram on the borders of Russia, but has itself sent its military forces to fight alongside its NATO backers, in various parts of the globe!
“Since 1992, over 30,000 soldiers have taken part in missions in the former Yugoslavia (IFOR in Bosnia and Herzegovina, UNPROFOR and UNTAES in Croatia, Kfor in Kosovo), the Middle East (Southern Lebanon, Kuwait, Iraq), and Africa (Angola, Sierra Leone, Liberia).”
(Source: Wikipedia)
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