robbo203
Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
“That statement, perhaps unwittingly, has devastating ramifications for the socialist revolution. The SPGB talks about a majority needing to understand and implement it. But if a figure of 99% or even 82% is required to bring it about and avoid a serious minority problem then you really are residing in the realms of cloud cuckoo land.”
………………………………….I don’t think so at all. Ideas don’t spread in the fashion you think you do. If 82% of the population were 100% committed to socialism that would suggest that most of the remaining 18% would be at least sympathetic to socialism. Why should that be a problem? It is inconceivable that the growth of the socialist movement would not also at the same time, alter the general social climate of opinion in a direction that favoured its further growth.
By the time we numbered even 25% of the population, I suggest that at least a further 50% would probably be “semi-socialist” in outlook. Certainly, it would be virtually impossible for capitalist governments by then to get away with waging stupid wars like the one currently being waged in Ukraine. By then there would already be a sea change in society´s value system which governments have to adapt to maintain legitimacy
One of the things that strikes me about this whole sordid business of the Ukraine war is the utter hypocrisy of the protagonists (on both sides mind you)
Here´s a video clip of Lavrov pointing out the hypocrisy of the US regime recognizing the right of Israel to annex the Golan Heights that previously belonged to Syria. on the grounds that was in Israeli national security interests to do so. Yet Blinken the US spokesman does not extend the same right to Russia to annex Crimea for precisely the same reasons.
Of course, this comparison could backfire on Lavrov because it implies a parallel between Russia’s and Israel´s situation and thereby justifies Israel´s takeover of the Golan Heights in a roundabout way. Still, it is instructive in showing the double standards of the capitalist warmongers. When it suits them international law will be set aside and conveniently forgotten
No one here (as far as I know) is defending Russian military aggression but what is conspicuously absent in PGB´s account is any reference to Ukrainian military aggression toward the Donbas. This region sought to break away from Ukraine following the illegal CIA-backed coup that brought into power a regime that pursued Russophobic discriminatory policies. Ukrainian military aggression against Donbas, in clear violation of the Minsk agreement, led to the deaths of thousands of people from 2014 onwards. (I believe the figure was 14,500 up until the Russian invasion but I might be wrong)
The point is you have to be even-handed in condemnation of military aggression. As I understand it, what sparked the Russian invasion was evidence that Ukraine was mounting troops and equipment to make one final big push to take back the Donbas and that this had been preceded by an upsurge in Ukrainian bombardment of the region. That was the trigger that started the Russian invasion.
Socialists support neither side in this capitalist conflict and this is what PGB, as a liberal, who evidently believes in the cause of a so-called “just war”, cannot seem to understand. He says:
“You say it is a “socialist principle” not to kill fellow workers in conflicts between capitalist states. But conflicts between capitalist states may have little or nothing to do with capitalism as such, inasmuch as they are not principally fought over resources, markets or trade routes etc. Putin’s war of aggression against Ukraine is such a one. ”
Well firstly, the protagonists involved are not likely to say that the reason why they are engaging in a war is to capture resources, markets, trade routes, and so on, and is rather naive to imagine they ever would say that. On the contrary, virtually without exception, both sides in wars. particularly in the modern era, will explain their motives in high-minded moralistic cum ideological terms such as “defending Western values”, “defending democracy” or “fighting the evil of fascism”. They have to as a way of justifying their actions. However, that doesn’t mean that economic motives are not the underlying causal factors and we should not be so gullible as to just swallow uncritically what the propagandists on both sides of any capitalist conflict tell us is the reasons why they are fighting.
Secondly, and quite apart from that, PGB doesn’t seem to grasp that it is the very concept of the capitalist nation-state that socialists call into question – not just the appalling consequences that flow from the actions of these entities. PGB thinks the nation-state is an entity that is somehow worth defending. That is the difference between him and socialists.
So yes we are more than just pacificists. We are hostile to the very socioeconomic construct that is the “capitalist nation-state”. You cannot separate support for a capitalist nation-state from support for the economic system that gave birth to this construct.
Finally, there is the question of the pain and suffering caused by war. The liberal identifies the cause of all this pain and suffering as the enemy who is driven by evil intentions to inflict harm on others and who must therefore be removed at all costs. But let’s be realistic here. The decision to militarily resist an invader is as much a cause of pain and suffering as the invasion itself. You only want to resist the invader because you think your nation-state, your so-called land, is worth having and defending. Obviously, socialists have no such delusions. For us, it does not matter what is the colour of the flag that hangs from your local town hall and we refuse to put our lives on the line for such an empty and meaningless cause.
The logic of the liberal nationalistic-minded belief in a just war leads us directly to the insanity of the situation we face today. Since the beginning of this year, the front line has barely budged. In fact, according to this article, the Russian side has gained slightly more territory overall than the Ukrainian side
Russia is seemingly content to continue a war of attrition which in the long run it is bound to win because of its numerical superiority. The day will come when Ukraine will not be able to offer any more serious resistance and the Russian military will very likely surge forward and take the remaining parts of Donbas and even possibly Odessa. I read somewhere that the rate at which Ukrainian troops are surrendering has recently stepped up; it numbers in the thousands. God knows how many have already lost their lives. Figures have been bandied around in the region of 200,000 or more. And that’s just the Ukrainian side. The number of wounded or scarred for life will be much more.
The thing is if you believe in the concept of a just war then thats it – you are committed to sending more troops into the meat grinder ´without any end in sight as a matter of high moral principle regardless of how many get slaughtered since the original “causus belli” still exists in your eyes. This is the reckless logic of the lunatic, the religious fanatic. However, once you start thinking pragmatically and start saying enough is enough then you are into a whole different ball game. You are starting to judge the merits of participating in the war in terms of the consequences of doing so. You are breaking with the moral fanaticism of the liberal idealist.
I would argue that the most logical and consistent expression of the pragmatic approach is, in fact, the socialist view. There is nothing to be gained by workers on either side by participating in this war and an awful lot to lose as we have plainly seen. If the pragmatic approach had prevailed this utterly disastrous and pointless war would never have occurred
This is interesting. Lavrov hints at the possibility of peace on certain terms though the article doesn’t mention Donbas. According to one commentator “Lavrov’s statement, then, does imply that Moscow would recognize Ukraine’s 1990 borders if Ukraine foreswore membership in NATO.”
Makes you wonder what is going on behind the scenes. On the other hand the article is from the Daily Express and that is a very unreliable source of information so who knows?
lizzie45; “The Ukrainians are attempting to defend their homeland in much the same way most people would attempt to defend their homes (and loved ones) against an intruder.”
That’s a ridiculous comparison. Your “home” is something tangible (bricks and mortar) as are your loved ones. Your “homeland” is not “your” homeland any more than Russian workers are said to own Russia in any meaningful possessive sense. The nation-state is a pure abstraction, the product of capitalist development. Benedict Anderson called it an “imagined community” and for good reason. And, actually, going to war in defense of your so-called homeland makes it far more likely that your home will be destroyed by missiles and your loved ones will be killed. It is far more sensible and pragmatic to offer no resistance or become a refugee than risk being killed for some dumb abstraction called Ukraine or Russia
Also, I love the way you bleeding-heart liberals defend the right of “Ukrainian” workers to misguidedly rise to the defense of their so-called land but you have absolutely nothing to say about the “right” of people in places like the Donbas or Crimea to equally misguidedly rise to the defense of their so-called land against Ukrainian aggression. What is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander, surely, but you never mention this do you? This stupid war probably would not have happened had Ukraine not broken the Minsk agreement and appalling though the Russian invasion was, we should try at least to be a bit more even-handed in our condemnation
Lizzie45: “That you’re unable to understand this will almost certainly be one of the reasons your party has been an abject failure for almost 120 years.”
If we have been such an “abject failure” why then are you so obsessed about the SPGB? I am sure there are more successful websites to which you can transfer your trolling activities if you are so convinced we are going nowhere. In any event, since the SPGB does not propose to do anything “for” the working class – we are not a leadership-based organisation and we maintain that the emancipation of workers must be carried out by the workers themselves (we are just a tool workers can choose to use to that end) – there is a sense in which the “abject failure” you talk of is really an abject failure of our class to take steps towards our collective emancipation. That presumably includes you Lizzie45, assuming you are a member of the working class…
While Ukrainian workers like their Russian counterparts go through hell and put their lives on the line for the sake of what they fancifully imagine is “their” country, their rulers have other plans. It seems the latter are quite happy to buy a bolt-hole in some other part of the world in the event that things go pear-shaped. With Putin I read somewhere that Venezuela was a possibility; with Zelensky, it seems Egypt might be on the cards (though doubtless, there will be other options including the USA)
An interesting article I came across on the “Naked Capitalism” website
“Marguerite Yourcenar salvaged one of the finest lines in all literature from the first version of her masterpiece Memoirs of Hadrian: “I begin to discern the profile of my death.” We are approaching that point with Ukraine, not just its military campaign, but also its economy. That baked-in collapse has been camouflaged by the bizarre pretense that there will be a huge reconstruction push, even more absurdly, funded by private sector interests. One has to think that the “rebuilding” patter is part of the cover for the fact that Project Ukraine is a lost cause.”
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2023/09/the-coming-ukraine-collapse-and-the-rebuilding-headfake.htm
By all accounts, it looks as if the Ukrainian counteroffensive has not really gotten anywhere and is increasingly unlikely to get anywhere in the future with Autumn approaching and the return of the mud. You have to ask yourself, even from a capitalist point of view, what is the point of continuing this slaughter? Bleeding-heart hand-wringing liberals may protest that Ukrainian workers have every right to defend “their” homeland against the naked aggression of Russian imperialism. But you don’t have to be a socialist – we don’t give a flying fcuk about the capitalist nation-state or where its borders lie – to see that this is not going to get you anywhere. The only peace you are likely to achieve will be found in the cemetery.
Appalling though the Putin regime is, and reprehensible though its invasion was, I don’t believe it is seriously intent upon the military conquest of Ukraine. It would probably be satisfied with the territories it has annexed and an assurance that Ukraine will not join NATO. Pragmatically speaking, I would think the best thing the Zelensky regime could do now is sue for peace and accept the reality of a partitioned country. There is no way you are going to prevail over a country many times larger, that sees your backers – NATO – as an existential threat to its own existence and whose own military has now become much more battle-hardened and has learnt from the lessons of its past failures
By all accounts, the Ukrainian regime, on the other hand, is now virtually militarily exhausted and on its last legs and is only sustained by the infusion of military aid primarily from the US, which is likely to reduce sharply in the future. The economy is utterly wrecked and will remain so for years to come. The population has plummeted – in the main because of the diaspora but also because of the deaths of combatants (by some estimates roughly 700 Ukrainian soldiers are killed in action every single day on average). Even just the legacy of landmines will be an immense challenge to overcome in the years ahead (in Angola, decades after the civil war, they are still trying to clear away the landmines. see https://www.maginternational.org/what-we-do/where-we-work/angola/#:~:text=Angola%20remains%20one%20of%20the,over%2040%20years%20of%20conflict.)
Of course, the Zelensky regime will never agree to a ceasefire on the above terms and the Biden regime would not want to lose face (with elections coming up) by urging it to do that. So this appalling and utterly senseless human tragedy will continue.
The outcome? Who knows, but if the Ukrainian military does face collapse this could give the green light to the Russian military to surge forward and capture large chunks of Ukraine including Odessa. Or there could be a coup that ousts Zelensky with the support of a war-weary public. Or things could just go on and on into 2024, 2025, and beyond and just get progressively worse. Utterly depressing to think about it
There is also this quite good Netflix series, Money Explained
“A conversation about money and its many minefields, from credit cards to casinos, scam artists to student loans.”
Here´s a write-up for the first episode:
“GET RICH QUICK
The first episode explains how people keep falling for “Get Rich Quick” schemes, which promise great wealth for a small fee.The presenters go into detail about past scams.
For instance, a 19th Century Scottish adventurer named Gregor MacGregor invented a country in Central America, called Poyais, and sold people land in it.
But unfortunately, the country never existed, and MacGregor fled with the investors’ money.
While this may sound like an extreme example, plenty of people are still falling for similar tricks.
There are a number of different scams currently out there:
Advance fee schemes ask you to pay some money now for a lot more money later, but the reward never materializes.
Pump and dump schemes are initiated by investors, who buy up a large amount of an individual stock. Other people then believe that it is valuable and also start to purchase it, driving up the price. Once it’s high, the initial investors sell, thereby driving the price back down.
A Ponzi scheme uses new investors’ money to pay older investors while claiming to make a profit.
Coaching schemes sell you a course that is supposed to make you more money, but it doesn’t work. The scammers get rich selling the course, not implementing the methods illustrated in it.
The experts in this episode warn that everyone can fall for these tricks, and we should be exceedingly cautious.They state that “if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is” and advise listeners to report fraud because that’s how scammers eventually get caught.”
Then there is this – on the workings of the stock market
I see that the TUC has just overwhelmingly backed a motion supporting the Ukrainian capitalist state in the war with the Russian capitalist state. The organisation misleadingly called “Anti-Capitalist Resistance” has published an article endorsing this position:
It says:
“This article explores the debates around the TUC’s resolution and argues for an independent working-class anti-war movement.”
and that it is
“entirely possible to support the people of Ukraine in their armed resistance, be critical of Zelensky’s neoliberal government and also oppose NATO”.
How much more Orwellian and dishonest can you possibly get? How on earth can you be anti-war and yet support engaging in a war? It is also delusional if it imagines that supporting the “people of Ukraine in their armed resistance” can somehow be separated from supporting NATO´s efforts in supplying the Ukrainian state with military hardware
Of course, it goes without saying that any genuine anti-capitalist resistance would strongly resist the capitalist propaganda that workers have a stake in some fictitious entity called the capitalist nation-state. This lie motivates Russian workers to support Russia´s military imperialism just as it motivates Ukrainian workers to rally to the defense of “their” capitalist state or workers in Donbas to argue, with no less (or more) justification to argue that they have every to resist what they see as brutal Ukrainian aggression ever since 2014.
All these different perspectives are based on the false premise that workers possess a country in some meaningful sense.
“The point of my post was for information purposes only – pure and simple!”
You need to learn how to rephrase your sentences, in that case, since it certainly looked like your usual trolling and uninformed criticism of this organisation which you delight in making
Whats the difference between the autocratic Zelensky regime and the autocratic Putin regime
https://www.cato.org/commentary/ukraines-accelerating-slide-authoritarianism
Once again, Robbo can’t comprehend why anybody would want to resist an invader who wants to subjugate them by surrendering their independence to an imperialist autocrat who will likely kill them if they resist. He can only believe that they fight over “a tacky piece of cloth on a flagpole somewhere” or what ALB calls “rags at the end of a pole”.
Very well said, pgb
______________________________lizzie45
Would that be the “independence” of the wage slave in Ukraine from the imperialist autocratic regime of Putin or would it be the “independence” of the wage slave in Donbas who wants nothing to do with the imperialist autocratic regime of Zelinsky as he or she would probably see it and that has firing missiles on civilian populations since 2014?
The same death cult of nationalism that informs the “invaded” with their delusional fantasy of “independence” (“the workers have no country”) also informs the “invader” – and nationalist-minded liberals like you and PGB.
I still await an attempt by you or PGB to justify the continuation of the war from Ukraine´s standpoint when it’s pretty obvious that the counteroffensive has failed and that continuing the war means passing a needless death sentence on thousands more Ukrainian workers whose lives you pretend to be so concerned about
PGB
It is difficult to know where to start with dissecting the utter nonsense you come out with. I take it you are some sort of liberal and so perhaps will find it difficult to comprehend the deep repugnance socialists feel towards nationalism and flag-waving that you refer to.
You write almost as if socialists are indifferent to the fact that Russia invaded Ukraine and to the consequences for the local population, On the contrary, the very ideology you endorse as a liberal – nationalism – lies behind the actions of the invader just as much as the invaded. We oppose it in both instances. You have that much in common with the hundreds of thousands of Russian soldiers who invaded Ukraine – your unwavering belief in the historical fiction called the “nation”. We don’t.
While we are at it, what is your view of Donbas when it decided to break away from Ukraine following the illegal 2014 coup there? What´s sauce for the goose is surely sauce for the gander as well. Do you condemn the Ukrainian military´s bombardment of Donbas since 2014 (and in contravention of the Minsk agreement) with the loss of some 8000 civilian lives (if my memory serves me correctly)? I bet you don’t. I bet you have conveniently forgotten about that but that was part of the reason why Russia invaded was it not? Again I am not in the least trying to justify that invasion. I am just pointing out that like all nationalists you present a very one-sided simplistic version of history in favour of your own preferred nation.
Then we have the current military situation which makes the case for an immediate cessation of war all the stronger. The Ukraine counter-offensive has run out of steam and is not going to go anywhere. Even its NATO backers are beginning to concede this point. The Russian military by all accounts is getting stronger and has learnt from the mistakes of the early part of the campaign. There is talk of them moving to take Odessa which will cut off Ukraine from the sea. There is also some signs of them moving westwards up in the northern sector. And yet the Zelensky regime dreams on about retaking Donbas and Crimea, a dream which presumably you and Lizzie45 share never mind what the people living there might think about that.
For all the delirious rubbish posted by the MSM every day in my feed, Ukraine is running out of options. It has lost so many soldiers and equipment that it is but a pale shadow of what it once was. As I understand, it has not been able to penetrate even the first line of defense set up by the Russians (of which there are 3) and seems less and less likely to do so with every passing day.
This was the context of my earlier comment that it made pragmatic sense to end the war now rather than waste thousands more lives in a pointless military adventure. But it seems you and Lizzie45 don’t seem to care much about those lives that will wasted. You don’t value them above the importance you attach to your own flag-waving nationalist idealism and that sacrosanct nation-state you genuflect towards.
You lecture us socialists about what the Ukrainian workers want. Well, for your information more and more of them want to escape Ukraine and avoid the fighting. But that lunatic zealot, Zelensky, and his regime have widened the conscription net to ensure a larger supply of cannon fodder to serve the fanatical goal of retaking Donbas and Crimea. Even kids are being called up. Ukrainians who fled Ukraine are now at risk of being deported back to Ukraine.
Of course, when things go pear-shaped it will be alright for Mr Zelensky. He can afford to play wargames now while the Ukrainian working class suffers. He can use his millions to find a safe haven in the US or anywhere else in the world that would have him. (I understand he has already purchased one or two expensive homes abroad). That is if he is not deposed and put on trial first – if not assassinated.
One or two things you said are true, though. It is undoubtedly true that the majority of Ukrainian workers are nationalist-minded – like the majority everywhere else. But since when does being in the majority make your opinion automatically right? I am sure the majority of North Korean workers enthusiastically endorse the repulsive Kim Jung Un regime. Are we supposed to think that the regime there must be OK because it has mass support?
Socialists have never been deterred by the fact that we are at the moment a tiny minority so what is the point of you telling us what you think the majority of Ukrainian workers might think? What they might think doesn’t necessarily make them right
Being willing to die for a capitalist state is beyond stupid. Let’s say it like it is. What is the point of it? There is no sense of national glory to experience when you are dead. When you are dead you are dead. Thats it. Anyone with any sense would want to make a decision that would ensure they remain alive.
Personally, I don’t give a fig about the “national humiliation” one is supposed to feel upon surrendering. At least one would still be alive. You might want to go on about the oppression that Ukrainian workers would experience under Russian rule. It would probably be no worse than what the people in Donbas or Crimea would experience under Ukrainian rule. Remember the horrendous acts that those Ukrainian Nazis did to those people in Odesa – set alight a building with many trapped inside. There are plenty of other examples.
The point is that war brutalises everyone who engages in it. From whatever angle you care to look at it the only rational sane and humane option is to end this barbaric war now and without further delay.
Incidentally, Mason has apparently been having difficulty in getting selected as a Labour candidate.
___________________
Mason is such a disappointment and has sunk in my estimation. Like people in the Ukraine Solidarity Campaign, he takes this rather moronic view that anyone who opposes the continuation of the war in Ukraine must ipso facto be a Russian stooge It does not matter how many times you tell people like that that one is just as much opposed to the Putin regime as one is to the Zelensky regime, it makes no difference. They still come out with this same dumb response.
Wrong on all counts, suckers… 🙂
But thanks anyway for revealing your true colors
_______________________________Lizzie45
I don’t think so
I don’t think we have been wrong on ANY counts
I´m proud to have “revealed” my true colours which is vehement opposition to toxic nationalism and the criminal insanity of capitalism´s wars. Something you are clearly not concerned with….
