And, Lenin also assumed that all such struggles were ones that would be led by workers, even if they were not the largest class. That is why he and the Bolsheviks developed the concept of The Democratic Dictatorship of the Proletariat leading the Peasantry. It is central to the concept of such national wars being inextricably tied to the struggle for Socialism, via permanent revolution, because as Trotsky sets out, in Permanent Revolution, and Lenin set out in The April Theses, and more specifically in the accompanying Letters on Tactics, the proletariat leads even a much larger peasantry, because of the heterogeneous nature of the latter, and because of the more homogeneous and concentrated nature of the former. But, in the process of such a struggle, the workers are led to put forward their own demands to meet their interests, which go beyond the demands of a purely bourgeois-democratic revolution, whether against a domestic feudal class, or against a colonial power, demands which can only be met by the installation of a Workers' Government, which itself must move forward to the creation of a Workers' State, or else be rolled back.
The Stalinists also took the distinction between oppressor bourgeois nations and oppressed bourgeois nations, and from it presented the bourgeoisie in the latter as somehow more progressive than that of the former, whereas, Trotsky points out, Lenin made no such comparison.
“Lenin nowhere raised and never could raise the question as if the bourgeoisie of a colonial or a semi-colonial country in an epoch of struggle for national liberation must be more progressive and more revolutionary than the bourgeoisie of a non-colonial country in the epoch of the democratic revolution. This does not flow from anything in theory; there is no confirmation of it in history. For example, pitiful as Russian liberalism was, and hybrid as was its Left half, the petty bourgeois democrats, the Social Revolutionists and Mensheviks, it would nevertheless hardly be possible to say that Chinese liberalism and Chinese bourgeois democracy rose to a higher level or were more revolutionary than their Russian prototypes.”
And, he also notes,
“A democratic or national liberation movement may offer the bourgeoisie an opportunity to deepen and broaden its possibilities for exploitation. Independent intervention of the proletariat on the revolutionary arena threatens to deprive the bourgeoisie of the possibility to exploit altogether.”
Nationalism always does that, as seen by the use of Brexit, by the most reactionary, elements of the petty-bourgeoisie in Britain, as cover to try to roll back not only the advances made by workers, but also to roll back the capitalist development itself that made possible those advances by workers. And, of course, that is what Zelensky's regime does, using its war against Russia as cover for its attacks on Ukrainian workers, but the USC itself excuses and apologises for those actions!
The Stalinists presented the KMT as “anti-imperialist”, but Trotsky notes, they were only “anti-imperialist” in their own interests, whilst cosying up to other imperialisms to that end. That is exactly what Zelensky does. It is the same point made by Trotsky, specifically in relation to Ukraine, of nationalists pretending to be “anti-imperialists”, whilst making deals with other imperialists, and that is precisely what is seen, today, in Ukraine. It emphasises the need to see even these “anti-imperialist”, national bourgeoisies, as still being the main enemy at home, and to warn the revolutionary masses about them, whilst ensuring the workers retain strict organisational and political independence from them, only ever making short-term, tactical alliances with them for specific actions in the field.
Often, therefore, we see this latter condition “provided it is not the revolt of a reactionary class”, and the other conditions set down in The Theses On The National and Colonial Questions, ignored, and an assumption, instead, made that all such struggles, no matter what their actual class character, should be supported, and, as has, in fact, often been seen, these struggles have been led by reactionary classes, or the political representatives of those classes, supported by other, more powerful external class forces be it imperialist powers, Stalinist states, or large reactionary states, ruled by clerical-fascists and so on.
In fact, Trotsky points out that British and French imperialism supported Kerensky in the overthrow of Tsarism, but equally supported Kerensky in turning his fire against the Russian workers.
"The ties between Kerenskyism and imperialism were indisputable. One can go even still further back and point out that the Russian bourgeoisie “dethroned” Nicholas II with the blessings of British and French imperialism. Not only did Miliukov-Kerensky support the war waged by Lloyd George-Poincaré, but Lloyd George and Poincaré also supported Miliukov’s and Kerensky’s revolution first against the Czar, and later against the workers and peasants. This is absolutely beyond dispute.”
(ibid)
Not only does Zelensky's corrupt capitalist regime support NATO imperialism, but it seeks to become an integral part of it, and has already sent Ukrainian troops to fight alongside NATO troops in Iraq. In other words, the world has changed in the last 100 years, and the assumptions made about the likely forces leading such struggles being a progressive proletariat no longer apply. What is more, the existence of colonies, where this distinction was most clear, as against the existence of annexed regions within Europe, has also disappeared, more than half a century ago.
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