robbo203
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Putin’s popularity is apparently on the rise in Russia but, one wonders, for how much longer?
Some interesting background info on why the Russian military campaign seems to be stalling
“Rich Russians of London”
This is another quite useful piece on the extent of Nazi influence in Ukraine
Concerning the War in Ukraine: No Love For Putin; No Guns For Nazis
“The Ukrainian military also reported Russian “disobedience” in the Okhtyrka district in the north east of Ukraine, where it said 300 Russian servicemen are refusing to carry out attacks.”
The position of huge swathes of the Left (with a few honourable exceptions), taking sides in support of either the Russian state or the Ukrainian state, bears comparison with what happened in the First World War when the Second International crumbled under the impact of toxic nationalist sentiments and when even lip service to revolutionary socialism was quietly abandoned thereafter. Yet again the disease of nationalism dressed up as the so-called struggle against “anti-imperialism” has claimed more victims.
What did Marx say about History repeating itself, “first as tragedy, second as farce”?
“You ask “Who cares which parasitic class claims to own which patch of dirt?” I imagine the Ukraine workers fighting against Russians don’t give a damn. And I can’t imagine that they are consciously fighting for what you call “the nation state of Ukraine”. Surely they are fighting to defend their own “patch of dirt” because it’s where they live, in their houses, where their children go to school, where their parents, aunties and uncles and friends live, and like all normal people they don’t like someone coming along and blowing it all up and threatening to rule over them”
LOL PGB
You have to have your head truly stuck in the clouds to have scribbled this utter tripe. Those Ukrainian workers you refer to have already got somebody ruling over them now. Its called the Ukrainian capitalist state. That is not going to disappear by them taking up arms to fight someone else “threatening to rule over them”. In any case, pray, do tell us – how do you imagine they are going to defend their patch of dirt and prevent the Russian army from blowing it all up by taking up arms against that army in the name of so-called national liberation? That is the one thing that will surely guarantee that their “patch of dirt” will be blown up and that their lives will be destroyed, as we are seeing right now
The least bad option that Ukrainian workers can take is to simply refuse to engage in this capitalist conflict (which is what it is despite your absurd denials) and, if this is not possible because of conscription, to seek to leave the country. There is no point in being a dead hero for a dud cause. By the same token, the socialist advice to Russian soldiers would be to desert the Russian military in droves or rebel and refuse to fight (there are historical precedents for this). Workers on both sides need to be encouraged to see that there is absolutely no reason for them to fight each other for a cause that is not theirs
What you are advocating stands directly in the way of this happening. The position you are effectively advocating whether you know it or not, whether you like it or not, is a pro-capitalist and pro-nationalist one. There is no way you can separate in de facto terms workers taking up arms supposedly to defend their patch of dirt from supporting and aiding and abetting the corrupt plutocratic authoritarian state of Zelensky. Worse still what you are advocating will result in the unnecessary and criminal slaughter of far more workers – Ukrainian and Russian – than would otherwise be the case.
You are effectively preventing the only sane and humane response to this tragic situation which is precisely the one outlined by the SPGB and a few others. You should be ashamed of yourself
“I suppose anything is possible—at least if your field of vision is that of a agency computer screen in the Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C.—but the last group that I can imagine turning on Putin are the oligarchs whose fortunes, and his, are tied together through a series of interlocking directorates that make it impossible to delineate where Putin’s wealth ends and theirs begin.
Most of the oligarchs understand that if Putin falls, they will fall with him.”
“Brexit shows Britons love freedom in same way as Ukrainians, Johnson says”
But Ukraine wants to join the EU, doesn’t it?
“Democracy Ukrainian style:
Zelenskyy suspends parties with Russian links”
Perhaps that buffoon, B Johnson, should be informed of this
“Brexit shows Britons love freedom in same way as Ukrainians, Johnson says”
Really this is a war between two capitalist autocracies….
“A socialist revolution isn’t a possible result of resistance to the invasion of invasion of Ukraine. It’s understandable that people will want to forcibly defend themselves against attacks on their lives and homes, but one needs to remain as clear-headed as possible and a clear-headed analysis means making a clear separation between the people that live in Ukraine (and not all of them are subjects of the Ukrainian state) and the Ukrainian state. An inforced mass-suicide in defence of the state is not something that furthers the movement for socialism in any way. And calls for escalation or prolongation of the conflict are just calls for mass suicide on a wider scale.”
Very well said, DJP! I have just submitted a comment on the website of the MHI along much the same lines. I would encourage others to do the same. I find it very disappointing that this organization should have taken the position it has done in support of the Ukrainian capitalist state.
Andrew Kliman says of Ukrainian workers “I’m going to listen to what they say is in their interests.” Does that mean he will be equally undiscriminating in listening to what Russian workers have to say when a lot of them seem to think it is in their interests for Russia to invade Ukraine?
Just because a worker says something is in her interests does not make it so. It is called “false consciousness”
Regarding the view of the other comrade not on this forum:
“I have to say I personally don’t agree at all this has been somehow started by the West, whatever their faults”
Yes, that’s technically correct but only in a proximate sense. It is also true that the West has contributed significantly to the situation in which the Putin regime felt it necessary for its own reasons to invade Ukraine.
At the time of the break up of the Soviet Union, there was an understanding, if not a binding agreement, that NATO would not move into Eastern Europe. Nato disregarded this and moved eastwards. Similarly, there is clear evidence of Western influence and support for the 2014 Maidan coup which toppled the then pro-Russia Ukrainian government that had initially been favourable towards the West but found its path to closer integration obstructed by the harsh neoliberal policies Western powers wanted to impose on it. The new pro-Western government that was installed actively discriminated against the Russian-speaking minority precipitating the Donbas situation, a major factor leading up to the invasion.
It is very important that we should not be seen to let Western capitalist powers off the hook, in the same way as we should not be seen to be sympathetic in the slightest to the brutal capitalist regime of Vladimir Putin. Both sides in this unfolding tragedy must be vigorously attacked for their respective if different contributions to making it happen.
And also we should not be seen to siding with those Left-wing fantasists who characterise this as some sort of war of “national liberation” and urge that Ukrainian workers take up arms against the “Russian invaders” – Russian workers in uniform who have been similarly duped by the obnoxious Putin regime. Suicidal heroics in the name of a pointless bourgeois “national liberation” will get you nowhere except the cold comfort of an early grave.
Leftists who think like this and want to betray Ukrainian workers for the sake of a Ukrainian capitalist state should really be consistent and honest about what they are calling for and align themselves more explicitly with the NATO camp that would be supplying these workers with the arms they would need to do what these leftists are urging them to do
“Self determination” – the mantra they apply to states, but never to individuals.
Good Point AC. In the end, the position advocated in the article is a nationalist one and therefore, ipso facto, a capitalist one. The author might just as well side with NATO which he condemns other leftists for doing because realistically where else are you getting to get your weapons from to fight your war of “national self-determination”?
