As Trotsky described, in relation to China, how on earth does any of this tally with the fantasy of the war bringing “national independence”, or of it, or the government, being “anti-imperialist”?! Its clearly, just as much nonsense as the idea that Brexit brought national independence, rather than subordinating Britain to the power of the global ruling class, to an even greater extent, as, indeed, Truss found out. Mason notes,
“But with Ukraine entirely dependent on the “kindness of strangers” this poses two long-term risks to its sovereignty and democracy. First, it hands a veto over the terms of any peace deal to Ukraine’s funders: they could force Kyiv to the negotiating table with Putin at any moment they choose, simply by switching off financial support.
Second, it risks handing the design of Ukraine’s socio-economic model to the private sector interests that will assemble in London this week. It was this second risk that concerned most of the speakers at the Another Ukraine Is Possible event.”
Well, duh, as anyone who had studied the history of popular fronts, of social patriotism, in WWI and II, or any of the other so called national independence movements of the last century, including China, could have told them, by subordinating yourself to the bourgeoisie, and limiting your horizons to purely bourgeois-democratic, national demands that is what always happens. Nor are these risks “long-term”, as Mason suggests, that subordination of Ukraine to the interests of imperialism, is happening here and now! The whole of this irrelevant conference of bleating liberals, posing as socialists, was reminiscent of the various schemas put forward by the Narodniks, in Russia, in the late 19th century, and attacked by Lenin, because they are thoroughly utopian in character, divorced from the reality of a capitalist/imperialist state, and its interests, as against the, at best, fanciful demands of liberals and reformists.
From the start, Marxists should have opposed Zelensky/NATO's war, as well as opposing Putin's invasion. The task was to insist on the interests of Ukrainian and Russian workers, a program of democratic demands, in both countries, aimed at mobilising them against the corrupt, illiberal, undemocratic regimes, in both countries. It should have aimed at a mobilisation based on political strikes, formation of factory committees, and so on. To defend workers' interests, it should have insisted on:
- extension of workers' and trades union rights,
- arming of the workers, and training under the control of the factory committees, and workers' councils.
But, other than in the form of empty statements, the social-imperialists and social patriots could advocate none of that, because, like Stalin's subordination to the KMT, they are subordinated to Zelensky and NATO, leaving the fighting of the war to them. The fascists and jihadists are smart enough to ensure that, across the globe, they only arm and support their own reactionary forces, but the social-imperialists have been notable in demanding that arms be sent not to Ukrainian workers to defend themselves, but to Zelensky and the Ukrainian capitalist/imperialist state, i.e. to the enemy of the working-class. Having done so, of course, those social-imperialists are then led to deny that the capitalist/imperialist state is the enemy of the working-class, and, as with Jim Denham, ridiculously claim that it is the defender of workers' interests! It is a direct repeat of Stalin and the Comintern's errors in the Chinese Revolution, and its arming and support of the bourgeois nationalist government of the KMT, repeated again in The Spanish Revolution, and, in various forms, in every subsequent bourgeois nationalist movement.
But, the social imperialists, even if they had wanted to, could not have sent arms directly to Ukrainian workers, because those Ukrainian workers are not organised, independently, in revolutionary, military units, able to receive and distribute such weapons, but are themselves subordinated to the Ukrainian state and its military. The social patriots and social-imperialists could not organise such independent, revolutionary, military units, because their whole program has been based on a subordination to Zelensky/NATO, and its war against Putin.
Of course, had they actually have been adopting a Marxist position, based upon permanent revolution and revolutionary defeatism, in Ukraine, and had been successful in building such revolutionary units, defending workers interests, as opposed to the interests of imperialism and the Ukrainian oligarchs, they would have soon found opposition to them trying to send arms directly to Ukrainian revolutionaries, from their own imperialist states. Indeed, Ukrainian workers, in such conditions, would have found that not only would Zelensky's government have been waging the kind of class war measures listed above against them, of wage cuts, attacks on trades union rights etc., but would have been unleashing the Nazi paramilitaries against them too, to disarm them, and showing, thereby, the real class basis of the war, as a war for the interests of imperialism.
“In the rope placed around the workers by the bourgeoisie the threads (“paragraphs”) favourable to the workers are traced. The shortcoming of the noose is that it is tightened more than is required “by the interests of defence” (of the Chinese bourgeoisie). This is written in the central organ of the Comintern. Who does the writing? Martynov. When does he write? On February 25, six weeks before the the Shanghai bloodbath.” (p 263)
Such is the nature of the way workers' are “defended” by the capitalist state and imperialism, of course, “for its own interests”.
No comments:
Post a Comment