History has repeated itself. The social-imperialists sold the workers into the bondage of US/NATO imperialism, as their only saviour against Russian imperialism, the underlying but unstated reality, of course, being that US imperialism would, at some point, demand its pound of flesh from Ukraine's workers themselves, as Trump is now setting out. Indeed, I pointed out, some time ago, that the, now, fundamentally misled and demoralised workers of Ukraine, will not just be easy pickings for western exploiters, but also, for Russian and Chinese exploiters. Trump's deal does not exclude the possibility that the Ukraine's mineral resources might actually be dug out of the ground by Russian or Chinese based companies, but that the US will still get 50% of the revenues from them having done so, as payment for all those weapons that the social-imperialists misled Ukraine into believing were being offered freely and generously by rapacious western imperialists! Had they not read how US imperialism acted in that respect, in relation to WWI and II?
Of course, the “anti-imperialists” have been no better. In the Middle-East, they have sought to align themselves not with the workers of the region, as the means to provide a solution, but have simply repeated the error of those that backed the Zionists. The only difference is that they seek to back a different bourgeois nationalist horse, i.e. a Palestinian rather than Zionist horse. And, having sought a bourgeois nationalist solution, they inevitably align themselves with all sorts of anti-working-class, reactionary nationalist movements, and states to that end. Their solution does not lead to a revolutionary, proletarian conclusion, via the process of permanent revolution, but, inevitably, limits itself to a simply bourgeois nationalist solution that pits Palestinian and other Arab workers against each other, rather than against the real enemy, the Arab and Jewish ruling classes, and the imperialist powers that stand behind them. It is the same approach as that used by the likes of Rosa Luxemburg and Josef Pilsudski, in relation to Polish independence, attacked by Lenin.
“See to what monstrous conclusions this monstrous logic leads, even from the viewpoint of the programme demand for Poland’s restoration. Because the restoration of Poland is one of the possible (but, whilst the bourgeoisie rules, by no means absolutely certain) consequences of democratic evolution, therefore the Polish proletariat must not fight together with the Russian proletariat to overthrow Tsarism, but “only” to weaken it by wresting Poland from it. Because Russian Tsarism is concluding a closer and closer alliance with the bourgeoisie and the governments of Germany, Austria, etc., therefore the Polish proletariat must weaken its alliance with the proletariat of Russia, Germany, etc., together with whom it is now fighting against one and the same yoke. This is nothing more than sacrificing the most vital interests of the proletariat to the bourgeois-democratic conception of national independence. The disintegration of Russia which the P.S.P. desires, as distinct from our aim of overthrowing Tsarism, is and will remain an empty phrase, as long as economic development continues to bring the different parts of a political whole more and more closely together, and as long as the bourgeoisie of all countries unite more and more closely against their common enemy, the proletariat, and in support of their common ally, the tsar.”
(The National Question In Our Programme)
When the Zionists in Israel, now, state openly to Palestinians, “who is going to save you, now”, they speak only a brutal and brutish truth of where the bourgeois nationalist solutions sought for the Palestinians, and advocated by social-imperialists and “anti-imperialists” alike, have led that benighted people. The response to the question of the Zionists should have been, "the revolutionary proletariat, including revolutionary Jewish workers will save us, and themselves", but the collapse of the global socialist movement into petty-bourgeois moralism and nationalism has made that impossible. Imperialism, and its poodle, the United Nations, was never going to save the Palestinians, and nor were the bourgeois Arab States for whom the Palestinians were also an encumbrance and inconvenience, as they sought to further their interests and alliances with imperialism, and so, necessarily with the Zionist state, as its proxy. The workers in Ukraine can expect no better outcome.
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