Social imperialists have, again, led the working-class into disaster. At a time of an evident and growing drive to global imperialist war, which, this time, would inevitably, and quickly, become a thermonuclear war, destroying humanity, the social imperialists have disarmed the working-class both physically and politically, by subordinating them to their own respective ruling classes, and making them simply foot soldiers in the interests of those ruling classes, rather than an independent third camp of the proletariat, fighting for its own class interests, against those ruling classes. The most obvious example of that, now, is in Ukraine, but the same can be seen in Palestine.
That, short of a direct military confrontation between US imperialism/NATO and Russian~Chinese imperialism, i.e. World War III, Ukraine could never defeat Russia, no matter how much weaponry NATO provided, should have been obvious to any intelligent person, let alone Marxist. As I have set out before, part of the reason for them believing it could, or was even about to do so, was not just that the social imperialists, and other apologists for NATO, swallowed their own propaganda, as part of a moralistic act of wishful thinking, but that, from the start, they committed to the false narrative that Russia wanted to annex the whole of Ukraine, and had launched a full scale invasion to that effect. The reality always was that Russia knew it could never conquer the whole of Ukraine, didn't need to, to achieve its aims, and so never did launch such a full-scale invasion.
US imperialism/NATO did not need to occupy the whole of Serbia to achieve its aims. It only needed to occupy Kosovo, and split it away from Serbia. It didn't mean that, in the process, it didn't also bomb Serbia itself, and so on. In the same way, Russia did not need to occupy the whole of Georgia in 2007, and, despite claims of NATO, and its apologists, that it would, it didn't do so, even though it clearly could have done so, easily, having driven its tanks right up to Tbilisi. It only needed to occupy the ethnic Russian areas of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, and did so using the same justification that US imperialism/NATO had done on many occasions, including in Kosovo, of preventing genocide/ethnic cleansing etc. Its amazing how many times imperialist powers have used this pretext as the basis for their own military adventures, and yet the social-imperialists continue to ask workers to swallow it.
Trotsky, writing as a war correspondent, during the Balkan Wars, not only noted, and searingly exposed, the lies and hypocrisy of the European imperialists and their media, which recounted, in gory detail, the atrocities of the Turks, whilst not only failing to report the equally grisly atrocities of those fighting against them, but, also, deliberately censoring any such reports made by journalists and socialists such as Trotsky. Trotsky wrote to Miliukov, who had been a prominent, liberal, Russian advocate for “national liberation” of the Balkan Slavic peoples, and advocate of liberal interventionism to achieve it,
“Recently, during the period of the armistice, you made a political journey to the Balkans; you visited several centres and, what is of particular importance, you went to the regions recently conquered by the allies.
Did you not hear during your travels – it must be supposed that this would be of interest to you – about the monstrous acts of brutality that were committed by the triumphant soldiery of the allies all along their line of march, not only on unarmed Turkish soldiers, wounded or taken prisoner, but also on the peaceful Muslim inhabitants, on old men and women, on defenceless children?”
(The Balkan Wars p 285-6)
The same has been seen in every such military conflict, with domestic populations being led into support for the actions of their own ruling class, by lurid claims of the bestiality of those they are fighting, whilst scrupulously avoiding any suggestion of their own atrocities. The justification of the genocide in Gaza on the basis, not of the already abominable nature of Hamas' attack on October 7th, but of a systematic and torrential series of lies, about babies being beheaded, women raped and so on, during those attacks, is a recent example. Trotsky, continued,
“Would you not agree that a conspiracy of silence by all of our 'leading' papers.... that this mutual agreement to keep quiet makes all of you fellow travellers and moral participants in bestialities that will lie as a stain of dishonour on our whole epoch?
Are not, in these circumstances, your protests against Turkish atrocities – which I am not at all going to deny – like the disgusting conduct of Pharisees: resulting, it must be supposed, not from the general principles of culture and humanity but from naked calculations of imperialist greed?”
(ibid)
12 comments:
Don't get me wrong, I feel there's a lot of interesting stuff here, but my brain spasms when I read "social-Imperialists". What are anti-social imperialists? Do you mean socialsm, and if so, the ideal of sharing resources or a political party. Do you have a page that defines all these terms you use. I don't see the world in this way. I even have problem when people use "democrats" and "republicans" since, in effect, they seem to do the same things to me.
Hi Max, glad you followed the link.
On the Left of my blog, you will see a section of Key Documents, including a link to my Glossary of Marxist terminology. Unfortunately, you will not find in it a description of "Social-Imperialism", but I can readily solve that problem for you. In the 20th century, socialists referred to that section of the labour movement that backed their own states in WWI (and II) as "social-patriots", or some times "social chauvinists". In other words they used socialist, even Marxist verbiage to justify wars that were being fought for the interests of capital, between rival capitalist states.
The term "social-imperialist" is an extension of that same idea. In other words, we have people who call themselves socialists, indeed, Marxists or Trotskyists that have used the same kind of sophistry - often accompanied with large amounts of text and logic chopping, and outright lies and distortion of Marxist writings, to justify their support for, or at the very least lack of opposition to the military excursions of today's imperialist states, mostly the US/NATO, but a mirror image is also presented to support the actions of Russia etc.
Thanks. So what are the goals of Russia? I agree it didn't need to take all of Ukraine to achieve those goals, bringing Ukraine under the umbrella of Russia's regime. But it does now (because its SPO failed) ;) I recognize, however, that Europe might want the oil/gas more than a European facing government in Ukraine. My guess is that in the end, it will be some combination of both.
I don't think the "SPO" did fail, any more than its limited operations in Abkhazia and South Ossetia failed, or NATO's separation of Kosovo from Serbia failed. I don't think that the war is about securing Ukrainian oil/minerals. Its about global strategic advantage from a military perspective. The US has used the war to tie up and drain Russia, and thereby weaken it, much as it did with European powers fighting each other in WWI and II. Trump simply has a different means to the same end than those of Biden.
As I wrote at the start of the year, he's not going to commit to US troops or even further large scale weapons supplies to Ukraine, much as Ukraine, and some in the West want to delude themselves into believing. He can't antagonise his base by having the US involved in another forever war, and the only way of achieving that is by forcing Ukraine to do a deal with Putin based on accepting the loss of Eastern Ukraine and Crimea. Putin knows that, and he's not going to agree to any peace deal that does not give him that, and that does not exclude NATO membership and no NATO boots in Ukraine. (Incidentally, Starmer probably also knows that, which is why he feels free to offer UK boots in Ukraine, knowing he will never have to do it).
The minerals deal does not even require US companies to be involved. It only requires Ukraine to compensate the US for the weapons and financing provided. In Afghanistan, its Chinese companies that have swooped in following NATO's departure. China has also increased its trade and involvement in Ukraine, and all that Trump requires is that the Ukrainian government pays to the US the $500 billion out of the revenues it gets from such operations as rent, taxes etc.
If that reasoning is correct Putin would have stopped when he took the Donbas and Crimea. All Russia has today is more of that. Quantity, not quality.
Sorry, all the evidence points to him wanting all of Ukraine under Russian control. Can you separate "military" from "economic" considerations?
The mineral stuff is just plain stupid IMO. Trump just wants something to brag about. I doubt he could name a single mineral, and his cabinet too.
Yeah, agree, we should get a check from China for Afghanistan ;)
Most proxy wars are forever wars in a sense. If Russia mistakenly blows up an Army base there will be troops on the ground. No one wants a war. Unfortunately, once they start no one ever quits them. We go into complete societal madness--seems to me.
But Russia hasn't yet taken all of Donbas. Had they intended an all-out assault to occupy the whole of Ukraine they would have had to mobilise many more times the number of forces used. As it was they used fewer forces than those of Ukraine. Whatever the West says, Putin is not stupid or mad. He knows that Russia could never occupy the whole of Ukraine, and everything has been about trying to goad him into trying to do that.
I don't understand your logic. It's easy to say Russia would have had to mobilise many more times the number of forces in hindsight. Ah hindsight, 20/20! It's well documented Putin planed a 3-day operation. Does anyone dispute that Putin doesn't know Russia can't occupy all of Ukraine? Who is goading him into occupying all of Ukraine? It's interesting that your constituents are the "workers" yet 1 million of them in Russia getting killed or injured for a war that would have given them little mystifies me.
If Russia didn't invade you'd have 1 million workers working at stuff that doesn't get them killed. Putin is the worst boss of all time. That's how I'd see it in Russia--as a worker.
If I was a worker in Russia, I would also see it that I wouldn't go to fight a war on Putin's behalf, and that of the Russian ruling class. That is why Marxists oppose workers being duped into fighting such wars on behalf of their rulers, and why we opposed Russia's invasion. But, opposing that invasion doesn't mean supporting Ukrainian workers being used to fight a war, likewise, on behalf of their own ruling class, let alone a war fought mainly in the interests of US imperialism.
Its not a question of hindsight to say that if Russia had really wanted to defeat and occupy the whole of Ukraine it would have had to mobilise way more forces. Its simple military science. An invading force requires around 4 times the number of troops and resources of those it is attacking in order to have any reasonable chance of winning. I and others set that out right at the start.
The ex-General Secretary of NATO, George Robertson, as said that NATO goaded Putin into invading Ukraine, and before the invasion I pointed out that that was precisely what NATO and its repeated statements, basically calling Putin "chicken" for not invading, as well as the Ukrainian state's stepped up bombardment of Eastern Ukraine's ethnic Russians - verified by numerous international bodies at the time - was about.
If Russia sits on Eastern Ukraine, it is basically defending that territory, and so has the defender's advantage, as set out above, requiring Ukraine/NATO to mobilise 4 times as much force to defeat them. That is why they can't do so. Are you saying that Putin thinks he can defeat and occupy all of Ukraine?
Again, I can't follow your logic. Workers from Russia shouldn't fight a war on behalf of the ruling class. Russia invaded first. This is fact. Russian men killed Ukrainian men without any provocation, or reason, for the Russian man to shoot the Ukrainian man. But then you put the Ukrainian men as part of their leaders effort? By your logic, Ukrainian men are more political than Russian men. They are aligned with their leaders interests.
War is not fought on simple numbers. War is politics. You know that, but want to simplify it down the extrapolating from the number of men sent by Putin a correlation with his strategy or tactics. As I said, right from the start, Putin thought the politics weren't strong enough to defeat him so he didn't send many men. He did that because a strong mobilization at the start would have not provided him political room to negotiate Moscow's control of Ukraine while keeping European in line.
You get into a lot of this NATO guy said this or that. The only interest of a worker, IMO, I would think, is not getting invaded by anyone shooting me.
What does it matter who shot first? Had Ukraine shot first, I would be no more inclined to have Russian workers join in the resultant Russian response, i.e. to fight a war on behalf of Putin and the Russian ruling class! But, the question of who shot first is irrelevant for other reasons. For one thing you assume that the actual firing of a shot is the start of hostilities, which as Clausewitz set out long ago, is not at all true. As he put it, war is the continuation of politics by other means. Put another way, if you have a history of being aggressive, and come up to me in the street, in a threatening manner, as someone trained in martial I will warn you to keep your distance or will consider it to be an assault to which I will respond. If you ignore that and continue your aggressive attitude, I will not wait for you to hit me, but will hit you first to prevent it. Or as Lenin put it, in relation to WWI,
“Imperialism camouflages its own peculiar aims – seizure of colonies, markets, sources of raw material, spheres of influence – with such ideas as “safeguarding peace against the aggressors,” “defence of the fatherland,” “defence of democracy,” etc. These ideas are false through and through. It is the duty of every socialist not to support them but, on the contrary, to unmask them before the people. “The question of which group delivered the first military blow or first declare war,” wrote Lenin in March 1915, “has no importance whatever in determining the tactics of socialists. Phrases about the defence of the fatherland, repelling invasion by the enemy, conducting a defensive war, etc., are on both sides a complete deception of the people.” “For decades,” explained Lenin, “three bandits (the bourgeoisie and governments of England, Russia, and France) armed themselves to despoil Germany. Is it surprising that the two bandits (Germany and Austria-Hungary) launched an attack before the three bandits succeeded in obtaining the new knives they had ordered?””
(Trotsky – Lenin On Imperialism)
The US also adopted that approach, for example, in 1962, by threatening nuclear war unless the USSR removed missiles from Cuba.
Continued
I don't get your logic in saying that Ukrainian men - some women are also fighting on both sides by the way - must be more political, on the basis of my argument. How do you get to that conclusion? Both Russian workers and Ukrainian workers are fighting and dying in a war on behalf of the interests of their respective ruling classes, not their own interests, and in the case of Ukrainian workers, the interests not just of the Ukrainian ruling class, but US imperialism! The interests of workers in both Russia and Ukraine is not to fight each other, but to fight together to overthrow their respective rulers!
Its true that the conventional military ratio of 4:1 is not an absolute, but as a general guideline it applies. If you are an attacker, you need approximately a 4:1 advantage given approximately equal amounts and standard of weapons. In fact, given that Ukraine had been provided with some of the latest NATO weaponry, and that Russia was also facing global constraints on its access to weapons and materials, it should have required at least that 4:1 advantage. But, it went into the invasion with fewer troops and military hardware than that of Ukraine! Whatever you say, Putin as a former KGB officer, let alone his military personnel know all of those basics, and so the fact that they launched an invasion with so few forces signifies their intention was never to try to overrun Ukraine in 3 days etc., but was simply to occupy Eastern Ukraine, in which there is an ethnic Russian population that it could point to as being under attack from the Ukrainian state, following the 2014 Maidan Coup.
I think the interests of workers are far more complex than you want to claim. For example, Sudeten Germans were in favour of Germany invading Czeckoslovakia, to separate them, and to become part of Germany again, and that despite the fact it meant becoming part of Nazi Germany. And, yes, Ukrainian workers undoubtedly did not want to be shot at by Russian troops or anyone else, which is probably why they consistently opposed the attempts by some of their politicians to join NATO, which would not only obviously be seen by Russia as a threat, but which Russia had said many times before it WOULD take as being a threat, and respond to accordingly.
So, all the more reckless then was the actions of those Ukrainian politicians who, having lost in the elections in 2010 to a pro-Russian Presidential candidate, responded by organising, with western support, the 2014 coup to throw out the President, and steamroller in the joining of NATO.
Did I ever say Putin planned to occupy or take all of Ukraine? I simply said he used the minimal military he thought necessary to take it over politically. He was wrong. His gambit failed. Instead of taking the loss he continues to double down. He's like a chess player who simply look at the reality on the board.
Why won't you stick up the Ukrainian who is just minding his business in Bucha (for example) and ends up shot by a Russian. If you believe NATO is the ultimate reason, okay. I get all the NATO arguments. I believe I DO understand where Putin is coming from.
We could argue the geopolitics until the cows come home (not that I can afford a cow haha). Sure, there are "workers" against the "imperialists." But in the case of Ukraine, to me its the "weak" against the "strong" You side with the strong, oddly, though you hide it behind false equivalence of both being under the same, and equal amount, of imperialist ambitions.
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