The AWL states in the response to Socialist Appeal,
“The defeat of an aggressive and bloody military imperialism, and an increasingly reactionary and repressive Russian regime, one that sponsors dictatorships and far-right movements in many parts of the world, by a mobilisation of its victims could clearly have positive consequences.”
But its not its victims that are being mobilised against it, but the Ukrainian capitalist state, standing behind which is the massive imperialist power of NATO! Rather than dealing with the reality of the actual war taking place, they construct some completely ideal war that is not taking place, to justify their position, much as Lenin showed the Narodniks did, when they wanted to describe some non-existent path of development of Russia, in the 19th century, rather than the reality of its capitalist development. It is the same moral socialism and romanticism.
Which leaves aside that the actual war would equally strengthen, not just a corrupt Ukrainian regime, but also the vicious, militaristic and expansionist NATO imperialism that stands behind it, and which is pushing ever closer to a hot war across the globe, not just in relation to Russia, but also to China, and has repeatedly shown its willingness to suppress workers or any other social force that is antagonistic to US interests. What is more, it ignores the potential that, if Russia were defeated, something much worse than Putin could arise in his place, as with the defeat of the Kaiser leading to the rise of Nazism, or Russia falling more under the domination of China. Nor does it consider that, in such conditions, Russia might resort to nuclear weapons, leading to all out nuclear war, and the destruction of humanity, and so all possibility of Socialism.
We cannot possibly proceed on the basis of such campist considerations, as against the overall interests of the global working-class. As Lenin put it, in such conditions, the interests of the part, i.e. Ukraine, and even Ukrainian workers, are subordinate to the interest of the whole. And, as Trotsky pointed out, in relation to Czechoslovakia,
“One can say that besides the partition of the Sudeten Germans, Hungarians, Poles, and possibly the Slovaks too, Hitler will not stop before the enslavement of the Czechs themselves and that in this case their struggle for independence will have every claim upon the support of the proletariat. To pose the question in this manner is nothing but social-patriotic sophistry. What concrete roads further development of imperialist antagonisms will take we do not know. Complete destruction of Czechoslovakia is possible, of course. But it is also possible that before this destruction will have been accomplished a European war will break out and Czechoslovakia will find itself on the side of the victors and participate in a new dismemberment of Germany. Is the role of a revolutionary party then that of nurse of the “victimized” gangsters of imperialism?
It is absolutely clear that the proletariat must construct its policy on the basis of the given war as it is, i.e., as it has been determined by the whole preceding course of development and not on hypothetical speculation over a possible strategic result of the war. In such speculations everyone will inevitably choose that variant which corresponds best to his own desires, national sympathies and antipathies. It is clear that such a policy does not have a Marxist but a subjective, not an internationalist but a chauvinist character.”
The AWL response to Socialist Appeal states,
“But the idea that independent working-class politics and struggles can or should advance by dismissing resistance to the kind of oppression and militarism that characterises Russia’s war in Ukraine is ludicrous. And that is exactly what Attard does when he blindly declares “this is a reactionary war on both sides”.”
I do not speak for Attard, for the reasons set out above, but its clearly a non sequitur to go from saying that the actual war being fought between the capitalist Ukrainian state, backed by NATO, and the Russian state, is reactionary on both sides, to then claiming that this means that resistance to Russian oppression and militarism is dismissed!
If I say that the Tories are reactionary, and their policies are oppressive, and that Starmer's alternative to them is equally reactionary and oppressive, my refusal to fall in behind Starmer does not at all mean that I am suggesting no resistance to the Tories! It simply means that I do not see falling in behind Starmer as the means of opposing the Tories, and that an independent, working class alternative is needed. That indeed is the basis of an independent third camp position, as opposed to the bourgeois campist position that the AWL/USC has collapsed into, which is ironic given that the AWL claim to be proponents of the third camp!!!
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| Today's AWL, described the Falklands War as reactionary on both sides, and refused to support Thatcher's War to reclaim the islands from Argentina, and so uphold the islanders right to self-determination. |
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| Today's AWL have adopted the bourgeois-defencist "idiot anti-imperialist" position of Alan Thornett, during the Falklands War, which they then opposed. |
That did not at all mean that either Argentinian or British workers would cease to engage in independent working-class resistance to the militarism and oppression of both states! The AWL have, in fact, conveniently forgotten their position from the Falklands War, and have, instead adopted the “idiot anti-imperialist” stance of the Thornett faction, of that time, in order to adopt a position of bourgeois-defencism of the corrupt, and illiberal capitalist state in Ukraine, just as their opponents used the same arguments to justify bourgeois-defencism for the Argentinian capitalist state in 1982.
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