In addition to the above articles contained in the print version, the following important articles below also form an integral part of Issue 27. All these articles had been published as leaflets and mailed out to subscribers in the period before Issue 27 appeared in print form. They were not included in the print version only to allow space for newer articles given the large volume of articles issued in this period:
Above: Political prisoner in Ukraine, Inna Ivanochko sits in a dock in a court. Inna Ivanochko is the head of the Lviv organisation of Opposition Platform — For Life, which was Ukraine’ second largest party in parliament until it was persecuted and then banned. She is facing up to 15 years in prison for expressing her political views in the years before the war started – which the Ukrainian regime have now retrospectively deemed to have been in the service of Russia. Her supposed “offences” include allegedly participating in a September 2015 protest rally over living standards grievances and violations of constitutional rights, taking court action in 2018 against a city council decision to knock down a monument to Soviet World War II soldiers and advocating turning Ukraine into a federal state during a 2018 television interview. Photo: Supplied
Do Not Buy the Lie That Backing Ukraine’s War Is a Matter of “Defending a Democracy”!
Down With the Albanese Government’s Military Aid to Ukraine!
Free the Thousands of Leftist, Anti-War and Anti-Nationalist Political Prisoners in Ukraine
25 June 2024: In late April, the Albanese Labor government announced yet another $100 million in “aid” to Ukraine. The new “aid” package includes air-dropped bombs and drones. The package was announced by deputy prime minister, Richard Marles during a visit to Ukraine where he encouraged the Ukrainian regime to continue its war against Russia. Marles also affirmed the continued participation of Australian soldiers in an operation training Ukrainian troops in Britain. Tens of thousands of Ukrainian troops have already been trained in this U.K.-led operation. The U.S. and European NATO powers and their allies, like the Australian imperialist regime, are prepared to fight to the last drop of Ukrainian blood to advance their proxy war against Russia.
As millions of low-paid workers, working-class youth, unemployed workers and pensioners suffer under soaring rents, Australian governments have failed to provide adequate funding for the public housing that could help drive down rents across the rental market. Meanwhile, governments of all stripes refuse to substantially boost the crushingly low Jobseeker payments. They say that there is a need to be “prudent” to avoid fueling inflation. Yet, when it comes to fueling death and destruction in distant lands to shore up Western imperialist domination of the world, successive federal governments have had no trouble finding large financial resources. The April announcement brings the Australian regime’s total military assistance to its Ukrainian counterparts to $880 million. Earlier announced Australian military support included the provision of armoured vehicles, six M777 155mm howitzers and artillery shells.
This military assistance is backed by all the parties in the Australian parliament, the entire mainstream media and all of Australia’s influential political think tanks. Yet despite this and the ruling class’ intense propaganda campaign supporting the proxy war against Russia, many Australians do not buy the government’s “rationales” for its military support to its Ukrainian counterparts. Indeed a poll conducted this month by the Australian government-controlled ABC news outlet found that a (small) majority of Australians actually want the government to wind back or end support for Ukraine.
One of the main narratives that Australia’s ruling class and other Western imperialist ruling classes use to justify their massive military backing of Ukraine is their claim that they are “defending a fellow democracy against an authoritarian power.” However the Ukrainian capitalist regime is no “democracy” of any kind! Fascist forces play a prominent role in Ukraine’s state organs. For example, a key part of Ukraine’s National Guard and prominent part of the regime’s ultra-nationalist folklore is the fascist Azov Assault Brigade. Formed in 2014 by neo-Nazi politician Andriy Biletsky, the Azov Assault Brigade sports Nazi regalia and trains its members in white supremacist and neo-Nazi ideology. It is notorious for murdering, raping and assaulting numerous leftists, members of ethnic minorities and civilians sympathetic to Russia. The character of the Ukrainian regime can also be seen from the fact that in 2015 it made two Nazi-collaborating, anti-Soviet paramilitary groups (the UPA and the OUN), “heroes of Ukraine.” During World War II, the UPA and OUN between them murdered 100,000 Polish people and tens of thousands of Jewish people, while helping their Nazi allies to carry out the Holocaust. The Ukrainian regime has also renamed many streets after the fascist leader of the OUN, Stepan Bandera; and have also erected numerous statues and other monuments to this Nazi-allied war criminal.
Capitalism and Democracy
Of course, the Western regimes using Ukraine are hardly true “democracies” themselves. To be sure Western governments are elected and citizens are theoretically able to advance their political views. However, in practice it is the wealthy capitalists, in great disproportion to their small numbers that have the means to shape public opinion and hence steer election outcomes. It is they who own the media, establish and finance the political think tanks, provide much of the funding for political parties and political NGOs and have the financial resources to pay for expensive political advertising and lobbyists. Thus in terms of political influence, “democracies” under capitalism run more on “one dollar, one vote” rather than the nominal, “one person, one vote.” Moreover, due to their tremendous wealth and control of the economy, the capitalists are able to ensure that all the key state institutions remain tied to them by thousands of threads irrespective of which political party is elected to govern. Therefore, in all nominally “democratic” capitalist countries, the form of “democracy” masks the reality that the system is in fact just a form of dictatorship of the capitalist class. To the extent that there is any real democracy it is only that the different capitalists and pro-capitalist factions are able to freely and “democratically” debate their differences and arrive at a majority decision about which policies best serve the interests of their class. Moreover, just as in more openly authoritarian forms of capitalist rule, whenever the rule of the capitalist class faces a serious challenge, the ruling class will resort to the most brutal authoritarian repression to protect their interests.
Nevertheless, as far as the working-class and other oppressed are concerned, this pseudo-“democratic” form of administering capitalism is preferable to other forms of capitalism – like fascism, military dictatorship etc – because it allows the masses comparatively greater freedoms with which to organise resistance against capitalist exploitation. That is why in capitalist parliamentary democracies like Australia, we oppose every attack of the ruling class on the limited democratic rights that the masses do have. And as decaying, late-stage capitalism is increasingly unable to meet the needs of the masses, in nearly every capitalist parliamentary “democracy” around the world the worried capitalist class is chipping away at the political rights that it had previously conceded to the masses. Just look at the hardline anti-protest laws that have been enacted in NSW and other Australian states and the federal government’s draconian “foreign interference” laws which are aimed at suppressing expressions of sympathy for socialistic China.
Today’s Ukraine – Not Any Kind of Democracy At All
Today’s capitalist Ukraine does not even have the truncated, “democratic” form of the dictatorship of the capitalist class that exists today in Australia, the U.S., France and other so-called “Western democracies.” Political parties and activists genuinely opposed to the Ukrainian government’s policies face severe and brutal repression. Such repression greatly intensified after a 2014 far-right coup, engineered by Washington and the European imperialist powers. That coup overthrew the elected government of Viktor Yanukovych who attempted to simultaneously maintain friendly ties with both Russia and the EU. Yanukovych’s government was replaced by a rabidly Ukrainian nationalist regime that was as fiercely anti-Russia as it was pro-Western. The new regime enacted laws discriminating against the Russian-speaking populations in the east of Ukraine as well as against other non-Ukrainian minorities. When the post-2014 regime inevitably met with opposition – especially in the east and south of the country – this was met with extreme repression supplemented by the terror of fascist gangs. In 2015, the regime banned the sizable Communist Party of Ukraine and two smaller other, nominally communist parties. Meanwhile the regime jailed or threatened political opponents and journalists.
Some Ukrainians have made courageous efforts to detail the persecution that others are facing at the hands of the Ukrainian regime. Among these is Ukrainian journalist Pavel Volkov. Volkov was himself imprisoned from 2017 for thirteen months for merely writing articles critical of the 2014 right-wing coup and for sympathising with the plight of the people of the eastern, mostly Russian-speaking, Donbass region who were attacked for their opposition to the new ultra-nationalist order. For this, he was accused of “separatism,” “terrorism,” and “collaboration with the enemy”. Due to the efforts of out of court supporters and a dedicated team of lawyers, Volkov eventually proved the charges false in court. However, this was a very rare case where the Ukrainian regime’s trumped-up charges against opponents have been defeated in the regime’s courts. Most of those targeted end up in prison or worse. Pavel Volkov described what he observed in the years 2018-2020:
“… people have been tried under `separatist’ and `terrorist’ articles for laying flowers at the Soviet monuments; paying taxes for DPR (Donetsk People’s Republic) [a pro-Russia rebel government that was established in the eastern Donetsk region by opponents of the post-2014 far-right regime]; organizing `Pushkin Balls,’ and so on. Any activity that can be interpreted as the glorification of the Soviet past, the valorization of the Russian culture, or the recognition of the authorities of rebellious Donbass came to be acknowledged as `separatist’ and `terrorist.’”
Since the outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine war in February 2022, the Ukrainian regime has used the cover of the war and the mantra of “defending national security against treason” to persecute its opponents to a yet more extreme degree. In June 2022, the regime banned the biggest opposition party, the Opposition Platform — For Life, a party which just 17 months before had been leading Ukraine’s opinion polls. Similarly, the regime banned several other parties – accusing all of either “collaborating with Russia” or “violating the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine” or “destabilising the social and political situation in Ukraine”. Among the parties that the Ukrainian regime banned include Viktor Yanukovych’s former party, the Party of Regions as well as Derzhava, Nashi, Opposition Bloc, Socialist Party of Ukraine and Union of Left Forces.
Anyone in Ukraine who expresses even the mildest sympathy for Russia or who advocates peace talks is targeted. Other dissidents are falsely accused of pro-Russia sympathies in order to silence them. As journalist, Pavel Volkov put it:
“Today, there are thousands of civilian prisoners in Ukraine who are deprived of their liberty and human rights for `likes’ under `incorrect’ social-media posts, Internet discussions of projectile impact location, frank correspondence with relatives in Russia via messengers, performing professional duties (like teaching) in the territories occupied and then abandoned by Russia, and so on. The retreats of the Russian Armed Forces from the Kiev region, parts of the Kharkov region, and parts of the Kherson region in later 2022 were marked by mass arrests, which continue to this day. This is what the SSU [Security Service of Ukraine] calls `the stabilization measures.’ Only in the summer of 2022, as a result of these `measures’ – apartment-by-apartment sweeps – 700 people were detained in Vinnytsa and Nikolaev – two regional centers in the southern part of Ukraine bordering the Odessa region.”
Although Volkov himself was forced to flee Ukraine in the latter part of 2022, he and his colleagues have since then painstakingly analysed the open source data of the various enforcement agencies of the Ukrainian regime in order to estimate the number of political prisoners there. They found that from the time of the 2014 far-right coup to the start of the Russian intervention in early 2022, the Ukrainian Prosecutor’s Office brought 643 cases to the court on political charges. This repression then escalated such that in 2022 and 2023 alone the Ukrainian Prosecutor General’s Office and regional prosecutor’s offices opened up 26,821 cases on political matters of which 4,315 have already been brought to the court with an indictment. Moreover, when the cases brought by the Ukrainian National Police and the SSU secret police are also included, Volkov and Co. found that the Ukrainian regime had opened up over 74 thousand criminal cases on politically motivated charges. This means that the number of people in today’s Ukraine who are in either prison or pre-trial detention on the basis of political charges is likely to be in the tens of thousands.
Among the laws that Ukrainian regime have used to persecute dissidents is Article 436-2 of Ukraine’s criminal code which nominally prosecutes people for: justification, recognition as legitimate or denial of the armed aggression of the Russian Federation against Ukraine or glorification of its participants. Articles 110 and 110-2 of Ukraine’s criminal code also targets people for expressing dissident views but does so under the official charge of: trespass against the territorial integrity or inviolability of Ukraine or financing of such actions. Volkov’s research shows that under these three articles of the criminal code alone, Ukrainian prosecutors in 2022 and 2023 have opened up 14,411 political cases of which more than 1,400 were already brought to court during that period. Under the likes of these type of pretexts, Professor Sergey Shubin from the Nikolayev region was sentenced to 15 years in prison for merely making reflections in his personal diary on what life would be like in the region if it were occupied by the Russian army. A pensioner from Sumy region Lyudmila Vazhinskaya was sentenced to six months jail for advocating peace talks between Ukraine and Russia while talking with people in a queue for milk. In a high-profile case, Inna Ivanochko, the head of the Lviv (city in western Ukraine) organisation of Ukraine’ second biggest parliamentary party (until it was persecuted and then banned), Opposition Platform — For Life, was arrested in August 2022 and has been in pre-trial detention ever since. She is facing up to 15 years in prison for expressing her political views in the years before the war started. These include allegedly participating in a September 2015 rally against low pensions, increased tariffs and violations of constitutional rights, taking legal action in a Lviv court (!!) against the 2018 decision of the Lviv City Council to knock down a monument to Soviet World War II soldiers and advocating turning Ukraine into a federal state (an idea which is branded “separatism” in contemporary Ukraine) in a television interview in 2018. Outrageously, the three lawyers who defended Inna Ivanochko have also all been arrested. The latest of her lawyers to be arrested was Svetlana Novitskaya who was seized on February 20 of this year and has been imprisoned ever since. She is accused of violating Article 436-2 of Ukraine’s criminal code, “denying the military aggression of the Russian Federation against Ukraine” … for her statements in court defending her client, Inna Ivanochko! Defence lawyers imprisoned for their submissions in court defending their clients – such is the “democracy” that the Australian and other Western capitalist rulers say that they are “defending” through sending huge quantities of weapons to their proxy!
Volkov’s research found that in 2022 and 2023 Ukrainian prosecutors had also opened 3,126 cases of suspicion of “High treason” under Article 111 of its criminal code and 7,058 cases on “Collaborationism” under Article 111-1. Most of the people imprisoned under such charges are those who worked in public institutions in the areas occupied by the Russian army. After the Russian troops withdrew from some of the areas, these public sector workers have been persecuted as “traitors” and “collaborators”. People like Anatoliy Miruta, a man from the Kiev region who was jailed for 10 years for negotiating with the Russian military to take local residents to the hospital and distributing Russian humanitarian aid. Or like, Valentina Ropalo, a resident of Volchansk in the Kharkov region, who was hit with a five year prison sentence for working as the head of the housing and communal services department while the Russian army was in her city, which was deemed to be “collaboration with the enemy”. Meanwhile, Olga Galanina, Deputy Chairman of the Berdyansk Administration for Humanitarian Affairs, is facing a life sentence because she agreed to continue her work in Berdyansk, Zaporozhye region, under the Russian administration. SSU officers kidnapped her student son in Dnepropetrovsk, illegally held him in detention, forcing his mother to come to the territory controlled by Ukraine, where she was arrested.
In addition to the political prisoners in Ukraine who have either been officially sentenced to jail or are in pre-trial detention, are a large number of others who have been abducted by the regime or its fascist auxiliaries. Among them is Sergey Chemolosov, a resident of the village of Ivanovka in the Kharkov region. Chemolosov had been distributing Russian humanitarian aid and helped restore the village’s electricity supply during the stay of Russian troops there. On 7 September 2022, Ukrainian military officers kidnapped Chemolosov and took him to an unknown destination. On September 9, Kirill Tymoshenko, the deputy head of the office of President Zelensky, published on Facebook a photo in which Chemolosov, with marks showing that he was severely beaten in custody, is sitting blindfolded with his hands tied. What later happened to Chemolosov or whether he is even still alive is unknown. It is also unknown the exact number of political prisoners that the Ukrainian regime has similarly abducted and is illegally detaining at secret locations.
Down With the Ukrainian Regime’s Persecution of Leftists!
The pro-Western Ukrainian regime has especially targeted avowed communists, leftists and others with sympathy for the former Soviet Union. Thus Pavel Volkov’s research shows that among the politically motivated criminal cases that Ukrainian prosecutors have opened up in 2022 and 2023 are 600 cases of suspected violation of Article 436-1 of Ukraine’s criminal code, which bans the production and distribution of communist symbols and propaganda sympathetic to communist “totalitarian regimes” (which is mostly aimed at supporters of the former Soviet Ukraine and the former Soviet Union). Already 322 people have been brought before the courts on these charges. Formally, Article 436-1 also bans Nazi symbols and propaganda sympathetic to Nazi regimes. However, that part of the law is never applied – especially since support for Stepan Bandera and his Nazi-allied OUN is a key part of the official ideology of the Ukrainian regime. Article 436-1 of Ukraine’s criminal code was indeed never meant to target neo-Nazi elements. The proscription of Nazi symbols in Article 436-1 was included purely to obscure the stridently anti-communist nature of the law.
Many of the leftists imprisoned have been prosecuted under trumped-up charges under other articles of Ukraine’s criminal code. Among them is left-wing activist from Zaporozhye, Yuriy Petrovsky who was hit with a 15 year jail term for allegedly providing assistance to the Russian military. Also imprisoned is Bogdan Syrotiuk, a leader of the Young Guard of Bolshevik Leninists and who is associated with the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI). Syrotiuk was arrested eight weeks ago on trumped charges of “treason” because of his opposition to both the Ukrainian and Russian side in the war. If convicted by Ukraine’s thoroughly biased courts, Syrotiuk is threatened with a prison sentence of 15 years to life. The ICFI have held rallies outside Ukraine embassies in several cities demanding freedom for Bogdan Syrotiuk, including a June 14 protest in Canberra conducted by the ICFI’s Australian section, the Socialist Equality Party (SEP). We in Trotskyist Platform add our voice to the demand for immediate freedom for 25 year-old Bogdan Syrotiuk.
Trotskyist Platform demands the immediate release of all those imprisoned by the Ukrainian regime for expressing pro-Soviet, communist and other leftist sympathies. We say: Immediately scrap the anti-communist Article 436-1 of Ukraine’s criminal code! We also call for the immediate release of all those imprisoned in Ukraine for advocating peace in the war of for expressing sympathy for Russia or merely admiration for Russian culture. Those public sector workers branded as “traitors” and “collaborators” for performing their duties during Russian control of their villages and cities must also be immediately freed. Down with the Ukrainian regime’s mafia-style abductions of dissidents and those-branded as “Russian collaborators”! Lift the regime’s ban on the Communist Party of Ukraine! Lift the Ukrainian regime’s ban on all other leftist, anti-nationalist, anti-war and other opposition parties!
It should be noted that we support the campaign to free ICFI-associated Bogdan Syrotiuk despite our profound political differences with the ICFI and the SEP. Not least among our differences with the ICFI/SEP is our objection to their decision to “denounce the Russian military intervention in Ukraine” in February 2022 – a point which they have been reiterating of late – which undercuts their nominal position of opposition to both sides in the war and slants towards a position of partially defending Ukraine (a true defeatist on both sides stance would not have taken a position on the question of the February 2022 Russian intervention). Today, recognising that Ukraine’s war with Russia has become subordinate to the Western imperialist tyrants of the world, we in Trotskyist Platform call for the defence of Russia (despite its reactionary capitalist rulers) against imperialism and its Ukrainian proxies. In contrast, the SEP and ICFI continue to take a stated position of opposition to both sides in the war.
Extreme Political Repression in Ukraine a Result of the Early 1990s Capitalist Counterrevolution
The political repression in today’s Ukraine is far more intense and brutal than any repression that occurred in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic during the last four decades of the socialistic Soviet Union. To be sure, in the mid-late 1930s when the, by then bureaucratised, leadership of the Soviet worker state, under the impact of profound international defeats for the socialist movement, moved to the right in many areas – from international policy, to economic and social policies, to backsliding on Lenin’s 100% correct insistence on being sensitive to the national rights of the Ukrainian and other non-Russian peoples – the Stalin-led bureaucracy sought to muzzle potential resistance to this rightist turn with murderous persecution of the most devoted and thoughtful communists. Soviet Ukraine was especially hard hit by this repression for a several year period. However, from the late 1950s onwards, the jailing of political dissidents in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic (and indeed the whole Soviet Union) became relatively rare. Moreover, the political prisoners that did exist in Soviet Ukraine during this period were largely not leftists. Rather, Soviet Ukraine’s repression mostly targeted opponents of socialistic rule – something which even a workers state operating under the ideal form of workers democracy may be compelled to do during the transition to full socialism if it is facing a world where the richest, most economically powerful countries of the world continue to be under capitalist rule.
All this is important to understand because the fanatically anti-Soviet Ukrainian regime and its imperialist masters present today’s Ukraine as “democratic” as opposed to the “totalitarian” Soviet period. Similarly, they portray the period of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic as an unending series of horrors in which the Ukrainian people were supposedly “oppressed” by Russians. However, during the Soviet Union’s hey days in the late 1950s, 1960s, 1970s and early 1980s, the masses of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic enjoyed full employment, free high-quality education, free health care and a rich cultural, entertainment and sporting life. The 1917 great October Socialist Revolution not only freed all the toilers of the former Russian empire from capitalism but it liberated the people of Ukraine from the intense national oppression that they faced in the pre-Soviet days when they were under the thumb of Russian imperialist rulers. To be sure, during certain periods of Stalin’s administration of the Soviet Union, there were bouts of partial re-institution of policies offending the Ukrainian people’s legitimate national feelings. However, from the late 1950s onwards, although there remained a degree of Russian centredness in the Soviet bureaucracy, the culture of the minority nationalities of the socialistic USSR again flourished with renewed vigour along with the economic standard of living of their peoples. It could not be said that the people of Ukraine were nationally oppressed in this period. Indeed, by the latter days of the Soviet period, the average life expectancy in Soviet Ukraine was nearly a year and a half higher than in Soviet Russia.
However, the Soviet workers state faced intense hostility from the considerably richer imperialist powers. The immense external pressure that capitalism exerted upon the Soviet Union resulted in a conservative bureaucracy being squeezed up to the top of the workers state. The rule of this bureaucracy, with its petty privileges, politically and economically weakened the workers state. Through suppressing workers democracy, the bureaucracy retarded the Soviet Union’s socialist planned economy from reaching its full and tremendous potential. Eventually, under the relentless pressure of the imperialist powers and the economic stagnation that this caused, the bureaucracy started making more and more international and domestic concessions to capitalism. This encouraged a layer of petty capitalists and speculators and highly educated, mostly younger, people – who were seduced by the promise that capitalism would bring them the standard of living enjoyed by the upper and upper-middle classes in the West along with “democracy” – to push for outright capitalist counterrevolution. They spearheaded their push under the cover of fighting for “democracy”. In Ukraine this was supplemented with virulent Ukrainian nationalism. Yet despite their promises and the massive backing they were gaining from the U.S.-led imperialists, most of the people of Soviet Ukraine did not support these counterrevolutionaries. In a March 1991 Soviet-wide referendum on whether or not to maintain the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, more than 71% of the people of Soviet Ukraine voted to maintain the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in a referendum that had a nearly 84% turnout in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. However, although the majority of the people of Soviet Ukraine – and indeed the whole Soviet Union – were wary of those who wanted to overthrow socialistic rule, lacking authentic leadership and being depoliticised by decades of bureaucratic rule, they were confused as to what to do and, to an extent, were even unclear about the need to forcibly resist the emerging counterrevolution. As a result, a relatively small layer of imperialist-backed counterrevolutionaries were able to destroy the greatest victory the working classes of the world have ever achieved, while the working-class masses watched on by.
The 1991-1992 capitalist counterrevolution and the resulting conversion of collectively-owned, public enterprises into the private ownership of a few was a disaster for the toiling masses of Ukraine. Indeed it was a catastrophe for all the masses of the former Soviet Union. Unemployment soared, people were driven into poverty, industries were dismantled, the social position of women diminished and ethnic tensions intensified. And far from the “democracy” that the leaders of the capitalist counterrevolution promised, every part of the former Soviet Union saw political persecution of opponents. In October 1993, pro-Western “democratic” Russian president, Boris Yeltsin unleashed tanks against protesters and his own parliament, killing nearly 150 people.
Such political repression in all ex-Soviet countries is driven by two inter-related factors. Firstly and most importantly, the capitalist counterrevolution reduced the living standards of much of the population. Bitter about their position and having known a better life in the Soviet days, the masses could not be held back from opposing the new social “order” through propaganda and nationalism alone. The new capitalist rulers also needed to unleash brutal political repression to keep the masses in check.
Secondly, the political repression in the now capitalist countries existing in the lands of the former Soviet Union is partly connected with the particular forms of capitalism that arose from the capitalist counterrevolution. In the lands that have never been workers states, capitalism emerged from feudalism (except in some settler colonies when it was brutally imposed on first peoples often living in egalitarian hunter-gatherer type societies) as a higher, more progressive social system than the one that it replaced. Then, after having exhausted its initially progressive content, now decaying capitalism brought only suffering to the masses, social reaction, imperialism and catastrophic inter-imperialist wars; while still containing elements of its ability to develop the productive forces further than the feudalism that it had replaced. However, when capitalism was re-introduced to the lands of the former Soviet Union, it had absolutely no traces of the young, initially relatively progressive, capitalism that replaced feudalism. Instead, the capitalism that was transplanted into the lands of the former Soviet Union was entirely the decrepit, reactionary capitalism of the late 20th century. Moreover, this capitalist rule was not replacing a still more oppressive feudalism but replacing a higher, more progressive social order – one based on collective ownership of the means of production and working-class rule. Therefore, inevitably, the new capitalist ruling classes dreamt not mainly of expanding the productive forces to boost profits but of looting the productive capacity that was already there and of making a killing by dismantling and selling off the former Soviet Union’s massive industrial base. The capitalism installed into the lands of the former Soviet Union was an especially corrupt and venal form of capitalism. Alongside the plunge in the masses standard of living caused by the reversion to a reactionary social system, capitalist restoration in the lands of the former Soviet Union led to a retrogression in the moral substance of the people. The destruction of a collectivist-based economic system and its replacement with one-based on exploitation and dog-eat-dog competition – especially in conditions of newly arisen poverty – has pushed many to abandon some of the caring, mutually aiding outlook that Soviet people were famous for in favour of a ruthless jostling for scarce jobs and assets. For all these reasons, the capitalism that arose on the ashes of the Soviet workers state has been a mafia-style capitalism, characterised by the close inter-twining of capitalists with criminal gangs and collaboration between state agencies and criminal groups. The brutality of the state organs in the now capitalist, ex-Soviet countries is then in part driven by their “need” to defend the interests of the particular capitalists-criminals that they are collaborating with by mercilessly suppressing the objections of both rival mafia capitalists and those citizens daring to challenge this corruption.
However, at the same time, more far-sighted elements within the capitalist classes in ex-Soviet countries see the need to bring order to their capitalism in order to ensure the efficiency and viability of their system. They seek a political force – typically centred around a “strongman” – to achieve this task. When such a political force is pushed into power by the dominant elements of the capitalist class, this force uses ruthless repression to make particular capitalists – and the sections of the masses that these bigwigs have brought around them – sacrifice some of their short-term criminal-linked plunder in order to ensure the overall interests of the capitalist class as a whole and the long-term survival of the capitalist order. This is the role played in Russia by Putin. The fact that he performs this function reasonably effectively is the reason why he has been backed by the majority of Russia’s capitalist exploiting class for so long – despite his occasional crackdowns on particular oligarchs. To be sure, the discipline to capitalism that such strongmen bring often does not apply to their closest friends and relatives within the capitalist class! That is why the capitalists closest to Putin are given favoured treatment – as long as they don’t drift into opposition to him (like late Wagner Group boss Yevgeny Prigozhin did!).
Yet, even amongst the repressive capitalist regimes in the countries of the former Soviet Union, today’s Ukrainian one is especially brutal. There are several reasons for this. One reason is that the people of Ukraine have suffered from capitalist counterrevolution especially hard. Notably, despite all the advances in modern health science over these last three decades, Ukraine’s average life expectancy in the year before the recent war began (2021) was actually lower than it was in 1989, the year before Ukraine and the rest of the USSR started sliding rapidly towards capitalist restoration! Moreover, whereas at the end of the Soviet times in 1990, Ukraine’s GDP per capita (as determined by the more relevant PPP – Purchasing Power Parity – method) was 95% of Russia’s, i.e. basically the same despite being far more resource poor than Russia; by 2021, the year before the war began, her per capita income was less than half that of Russia’s (46% of Russia’s to be exact). By the way, this comparison alone should smash the notion that Ukraine was a “subjugated” nation in Soviet times that became “liberated” through the destruction of the Soviet Union! However, the main point for us here is that the working-class masses of Ukraine have suffered even more cruelly from the capitalist counterrevolution than the masses of Russia. And thereforethe regime enforcing capitalist rule in Ukraine has been compelled to use still more brutal repression to keep the unhappy masses in line.
The second reason why repression is particularly severe in Ukraine is because the regime there took an especially fanatical anti-Soviet turn after the 2014 right-wing coup. They began knocking down monuments to the Soviet Union and to the Red Army’s victory over Nazi Germany. The regime even passed a law banning, under the threat of up to five years imprisonment, any singing of the Communist Internationale or the Ukrainian Soviet and Soviet anthems and any flying of the flags of the former Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic and the former Soviet Union! Yet a considerable proportion of Ukraine’s population is either old enough to remember how much better life was in Soviet times or at least old enough to hear such accounts from their parents and their aunts and uncles. To people who remember fondly and are proud of the achievements of the Soviet Union and of the Red Army’s heroic victory over Nazi Germany, the extreme anti-Sovietism of Ukraine’s ruling elite and its hailing of anti-Soviet, Nazi collaborators are unbearably offensive. This is especially true for the peoples of the southern and eastern parts of Ukraine, who have been less blinded by extreme nationalism than peoples in the western Galician region generally have. Thus to enforce its anti-Soviet laws, practices and ideology, the regime has had to use naked repression and intimidation against the significant percentage of pro-Soviet minded people in the country.
Thirdly, given that a significant part of Ukraine’s population speak Russian as well as other non-Ukrainian languages – including Hungarian, Moldovan and Romanian – as their first language, the post-2014 Ukrainian regime’s discrimination against the use of non-Ukrainian languages inevitably provoked strong resistance. Such discrimination is itself a result of the majority of the capitalist class realising that it could only protect itself from the wrath of the masses, discontented as they are over high unemployment and poor living standards, through diverting their anger onto Russian-speakers and ethnic minorities. Ukraine’s rulers are hardly the only capitalist ruling class to enact language discrimination in order to divide the working-class masses and prevent united multi-ethnic mass struggle against themselves. And they are hardly the only regime to face a revolt as a result of such discriminatory language policies! For example, in Sri Lanka, the majority of the capitalist ruling class, terrified by a massive 1953 general strike, which united workers from both the majority Sinhala ethnicity and the minority Tamil ethnicity, in the following years introduced language laws that ostentatiously discriminated against Tamil speakers. It was this discrimination against Tamil language speakers that in good part eventually led to the rise of the Tamil armed national liberation struggle. And similar to Sri Lanka, the Ukrainian regime’s language and other social discrimination against non-Ukraine speakers can only be enforced with brutal state repression against those who resist.
Fourthly, and in good part for the above three reasons, a significant part of Ukraine’s population does not want to fight a war with Russia. Many even sympathise with Russia, which is seen as less oppressive of pro-Soviet sentiment than the Ukrainian regime as well as obviously being more tolerant of Russian speakers. Terrified by this reality, the Kiev regime unleashes hysterical repression and violence against dissidents – both real and perceived.
Fifthly, the Ukrainian regime has a sizable support base of fanatical nationalists from which to launch repression against its opponents. Although a significant part of Ukraine’s population rejects the regime’s extreme anti-Soviet and anti-Russian hostility, there is also a sizable part of Ukraine’s self-employed and middle class population who have fallen for the extreme Ukrainian nationalism that they have been fed by the majority of the country’s capitalist class. They have bought the ruling class’ lying anti-Soviet propaganda. However, there is also a genuine fear amongst Ukrainian people that they will be subordinated by a new Russian empire as the Ukrainian people truly were in pre-Soviet, Tsarist times. These fears are born of the reality that today’s Russian Army is not the Soviet Red Army that liberated Ukraine from the Nazi invasion (and from Bandera and other Nazi collaborators). And today’s Russia is no longer a Soviet Russia that proclaims “Friendship of the Peoples” but a capitalist Russia whose rulers openly hail the expansionist, Great Russian chauvinist, Tsarist times. Ukraine’s capitalist rulers manipulate their people’s fear of being subjugated by Russia and inject into those legitimate fears ultra-right-wing nationalism, fanatical anti-Sovietism and loyalty to the program of Bandera and other Nazi collaborators.
In summary, capitalist counterrevolution has not brought the masses in the former Soviet lands any of the prosperity and “democracy” that the counterrevolutionaries promised – not even the token form of “democracy” that exists in Western capitalist countries. Indeed, it has brought the very opposite! This is true throughout all the lands of the former Soviet Union – and is especially true in today’s Ukraine.
Defend Russia Against Imperialism and its Ukrainian Proxies!
The Ukrainian regime’s imprisonment of tens of thousands of political prisoners blows to smithereens the claims of the Australian and other Western capitalist governments that they are backing Ukraine’s war in order to “defend democracy.” So what then is actually driving Ukraine’s war with Russia? When Russia first intervened in February 2022, the war was mostly an inter-capitalist squabble for territory. Ukraine wanted to forcibly keep lands in the eastern Donbass region where the majority of residents, mostly Russian speakers enraged at the fanatically anti-Soviet and anti-Russian character of the post-2014 regime, no longer wanted to be part of Ukraine. On the other hand, the Russian regime, encouraged by the ethnic/cultural solidarity of many of its people with the embattled Russian-speaking population in the Donbass region, wanted to not only grab the clearly pro-Russia portions of Ukraine but to gain additionally territory in regions where the majority of residents did not want to be part of Russia. Both the Ukrainian and Russian governments were driven by the needs of the respective capitalist classes that they serve to maximise the size of their guaranteed markets and the extent of raw materials under their control by maximising their country’s territory. For this reason, when Russia first entered Ukraine in February 2022, we called for opposition to both sides. At the same time, given that our “own” capitalist rulers and its U.S. senior partners were clearly backing Ukraine, we had a tilt that especially emphasized opposition to Ukraine. We demanded an end to all Western sanctions against Russia and an end to all Western military aid to Ukraine.
However, even from the first days of the Russian intervention there was another aspect to the conflict. The Western imperialist powers wanted to extend NATO to Russia’s borders in order to intimidate her. The imperialist powers wanted to prevent Russia from becoming a potential great power rival and hoped that they could instead, one day, again reduce Russia to the humiliated and dependent status that she had in the first decade after the capitalist counterrevolution. The imperial powers also hoped to pressure Russia into abandoning her friendly ties with socialistic China so that they could advance their main global strategic goal – to overthrow the Chinese workers state. Ideally, the imperialist powers hoped that through exerting pressure on Russia they could foster a “colour revolution” there that would bring to power a Western subservient regime – like the Yeltsin-Putin regime of the 1990s or the Ukrainian regime of today. Against these plans, Russia’s rulers understandably wanted to retard the encroachment of NATO to its borders.
Initially we judged that this driving force of the conflict was less a factor than the inter-capitalist squabble for territory. However, in our initial detailed coverage of the conflict, we foreshadowed the possibility that the antagonism between the Western imperialist powers and Russia could become the main aspect of the war. Within several weeks into the conflict, this is what indeed occurred. This was shown in late March-early April 2022 when Ukraine and Russia were on the verge of agreeing to a peace deal. However, that was scuttled by not only pressure on Zelensky from Ukraine’s fascist groups but by the diktats that the Western powers made to Kiev. Indeed on 9 April, then British Prime Minister Boris Johnson made a surprise visit to Kiev where he publicly told the Ukrainian government that no peace deal should be made with Russia. The following month, the U.S. announced a package of arms to Ukraine that was on a qualitatively greater scale than earlier military backing. It had become clear that although the element of inter-capitalist squabble between Ukraine and Russia remained, this was now the minor factor in a war that had become largely a conflict between Western imperialism and Russia, with Ukraine the proxy of the former. Although Russia’s capitalist rulers themselves long to build a new imperialist empire, they currently have neither the capital to do so nor the alliance of a wealthy imperialist power that could allow them to gain a stake in imperialist lootings through acting as a military enforcer for their ally. Therefore, what we now have is a proxy war between the real imperialist plunderers of the world and a capitalist but not imperialist Russia. Therefore, we in Trotskyist Platform called to defend Russia in the conflict, headlining in an article outlining our updated position: “Don’t Let the Western Capitalist Rulers Reinforce Their Tyranny Over the World! Defeat U.S., British, Australian and German Imperialism’s Proxy War to Weaken and Stifle Russia!” As our article explained:
“Such a defeat would weaken the ability of the imperialists to mobilise further predatory interventions abroad. It would also deter their plans to use Taiwan as a proxy to pressure socialistic China or even to incite a world war against the socialistic giant. Moreover, any setback for the U.S. imperialists and their allies in this proxy war would give encouragement to the resistance struggles of all those being subjugated by the U.S. and its allies elsewhere, like the Palestinian people suffering under incessant Israeli terror. More generally, a defeat for the Western powers in their Ukraine proxy war could only encourage the toiling masses of Africa, Latin America, the South Pacific and most of Asia to resist in their own lands the various Western capitalists that super-exploit labour, plunder natural resources, leach loan interest repayments, seize markets and manipulate and stand over governments. Within the Western countries themselves, a defeat for the capitalist ruling classes in their proxy war would weaken their authority. It would thus open opportunities for the working class and oppressed to wage mass resistance against soaring rents and food and fuel prices, plummeting real wages, the incessant expansion of insecure work forms and brutal racist oppression of persecuted communities.”
Our updated position meant that we were no longer calling for the Russian working-class to oppose the war effort of its own rulers – we were only making such an appeal to the Ukrainian masses. But for our work in Australia, the updated line did not change our fundamental slogans on the war. What it did do is to increase the urgency to oppose Australian military support to Ukraine as part of opposing the entire U.S.-NATO-led proxy war against Russia. As part of this it is necessary to campaign to free all leftist, anti-war, anti-nationalist and other political prisoners in Ukraine. This is not only to save tens of thousands of people from terrible suffering or even torture and death but to expose the lie of the Australian and other Western rulers that they are “working to defend democracy in Ukraine”.
Free the Political Prisoners in Australia Too!
It is possible through a campaign of exposure and agitation in Australia and other Western countries to make headway in winning the release of the political prisoners in Ukraine. This is because the Western regimes ability to make their own populations accept military aid to Ukraine depends on convincing their own populations that the arms are going to “defend a democracy against authoritarianism”. Therefore, exposure of the anti-democratic nature of the Ukrainian regime could significantly embarrass their Western masters and force the latter to push the Ukrainian regime to try and improve its image by releasing some of its political prisoners. In a similar but slightly different way that is how opponents of Cold War McCarthysim, demanding freedom for pro-North Korea political prisoner in Australia, Chan Han Choi and an end to the broader McCarthyist persecution of supporters of socialistic states, ended up pressuring the Australian regime to give Choi a much shorter sentence than the regime had been planning. Since attacking socialistic North Korea and its socialistic Chinese ally over “human rights” is the key method that the Australian rulers use to mobilise their own populations behind their Cold War drive against these countries, our agitation, exposing how the Australian rulers were violating the human rights of a North Korea supporter and how this was symptomatic of both the bogus character of the regime’s claims to stand for “human rights” and of the biased, anti-working class nature of its “justice system”, was very politically damaging to them. And it is only when our struggle against the capitalist exploiting class – and the state organs that enforce their interests – does political damage to them does the capitalist ruling class ever retreat.Solet us fight to win freedom for political prisoners in Ukraine by politically damaging the Australian and other Western rulers through exposing the mass incarceration of dissidents by their supposedly “democratic”, Ukrainian proxies.
We cannot call for freeing political prisoners in Ukraine without also calling to free the political prisoners in Australia. The latest of these is David McBride, the whistleblower who was last month despicably sentenced to 5 years and 8 months in prison for passing information to the media that had the effect of exposing a large number of horrific war crimes by Australian special forces troops in Afghanistan. The other three political prisoners here are victims of the Australian ruling class’ enthusiastic participation in imperialism’s Cold War drive against socialistic China. The latest of these political prisoners to be jailed was Di Sanh Duong. Duong was outrageously sentenced to nearly three years in prison for supposedly “preparing to conduct foreign interference” on behalf of China, because he … publicly donated money to a Melbourne public hospital charity! Additionally, many Aboriginal people in prison, although not formally political prisoners, are in practice facing a political persecution. For they have been hit with not only over-policing but with especially harsh punishments because of the enduringly racist nature of the Australian regime. So we demand: Free the Aboriginal victims of Australia’s racist “justice system”! Free David McBride! Free Di Sanh Duong and fellow Cold War prisoners in Australia, Daniel Duggan and Alexander Csergo! Free the thousands of leftist, anti-war, anti-nationalist and other political prisoners in Ukraine!
Photo Above: A man carries a young girl injured in an Israeli attack on the densely populated, southern Gaza city of Rafah on 8 May 2024. Over 1.4 million Palestinian people have fled to Rafah to oppose Israel’s murderous attacks elsewhere. Now, Israel’s assault on Rafah threatens a new catastrophe for the people of Gaza. Photo credit: Rizek Abdeljawad/Xinhua
STAND WITH THE PALESTINIAN PEOPLE OPPOSE THE U.S. & AUSTRALIAN IMPERIALIST BACKERS OF ISRAEL ON ALL THEIR BATTLEFRONTS!
10 May 2024: Over the last seven months, Israel has killed 35,000 Palestinian people. Now they are attacking densely populated Rafah. This Gaza slaughter is only happening because of the massive support given to Israel by the U.S., German, British, Australian and other imperialist regimes. Just two weeks ago, Joe Biden signed into law a package for the U.S. to provide Israel with a further $A21 billion (!!) of weapons. Despite its smaller size, the Australian ruling class is also hugely participating in Israel’s mass murder. Pro-Palestinian activists have rightly slammed the Australian government’s military ties with Israel and the hundreds of millions that the Albanese Labor government gives to Israel through granting Israeli defence firms military contracts. Australia’s rulers are also joining in Israel’s genocide in two even more consequential ways. Firstly, the Australian regime greatly assists Israel to direct its bombing raids through hosting and helping operate the NT- based, Pine Gap ground station for U.S. spy satellites. Secondly, the Australian military is participating in the U.S.-led strikes on Yemen aimed at crushing pro-Palestine actions by the Houthis in the Red Sea.
The world is outraged by the Western rulers’ support for Israel’s genocide. So, these rulers try to appear like they are restraining Israel. The Labor government has publicly given its Israeli allies soft slaps on the wrists. This while the joint U.S.- Australia Pine Gap base is pinpointing Israel’s strikes on Gaza’s people! For its part, the U.S. regime leaked vague claims that it had delayed one weapons shipment to Israel. But the Pentagon then denied that there had been any decision to withhold arms. Washington and Canberra are behaving like a mafia thug who owns a vicious attack dog. The crime boss fears that the dog’s extreme brutality is setting everyone against them. So they give the dog a gentle public scolding. But they still keep on feeding the dog chunky pieces of meat, for they need the dog to keep on attacking their adversaries.
So concerned are the Western capitalist rulers at their damaged credibility that their media have been implying that it is Western governments – and only these governments – that have been opposing an Israeli invasion of Rafah! This, even as it is clear that it is actually Western imperialism’s adversaries – Yemen’s Houthis, Iran, Syria, North Korea, China and Russia – who have (albeit to differing degrees) been the ones opposing Israel’s terror. Yet many are seeing through the deceit of Western mainstream media outlets. There have been large protests in Western countries against their own regimes’ complicity in Israel’s genocide. In Australia, opposition to the ruling class’ racist oppression of people of colour and Muslims is magnifying sympathy for the Palestinian cause amongst not only people of Arab background but people of Asian, African and Islander heritage, as well as anti-racist whites. In Sydney, there have been huge marches organised by the Palestine Action Group, attempts to stop the loading of ships belonging to Israel’s pro-war Zim shipping line and pro-Palestinian protest camps at universities. We in Trotskyist Platform support all these actions. We struggle for the world’s working class movements and all anti-imperialists to take action to demand: Israel stop your terror now! Israel out of Gaza and the West Bank! Stop the massive support being given to Israel by the U.S., Australian, British and German imperialists! Close the U.S.-Australia Pine Gap spy base! U.S., British and Australian forces get out of the Red Sea region! Let’s support the brave Palestinian resistance! Let’s stand with Yemen, Syria and Iran against U.S. and Israeli attacks!
RESIST THE WESTERN IMPERIALISTS UPHOLDING ISRAEL’S TERROR!
Many activists have shown great energy and courage to stand with the Palestinian people. But for our efforts to actually make a difference, another key factor is urgently needed: a clear political direction. For starters, we need to understand why the U.S. and its allies so intransigently back Israel. Some say it is because “Zionists control America”. But this has it completely the wrong way around! In fact, it is the U.S. capitalist ruling class which controls Israel’s Zionist ruling class. Israel is the attack dog for U.S. imperialism in the oil-rich and strategically-located Middle East. Its role is to weaken all forces in the Middle East that fail to adequately subordinate themselves to Washington – whether they be Syria’s government, certain factions in Lebanon, Yemen’s Houthis or Iran. In imperialism’s new Cold War, Israel’s key designated task is to target countries that choose to have friendly ties with socialistic China. For undertaking this project, the imperialists are prepared to support Israel’s murderous subjugation of the Palestinian people.
The imperialists know that China’s cooperation with developing countries is making it harder for them to super-exploit these countries. Moreover, despite the incomplete, uncertain and deformed nature of China’s transition to socialism, the Western capitalists fear that if China continues to successfully lift her people further away from poverty, the masses in their own countries will eventually be demanding socialism too. And the more that the Western powers see this existential threat resulting from the rise of Red China, the more unconditionally are they willing to back their Zionist attack dog. This is part of why Australia’s imperialist rulers back Israel. With Australia and China both inhabiting the Asia-Western Pacific region, China’s cooperation with the ex-colonial countries is particularly damaging to Australian imperialist plunder in the region. Australia’s ruling class also backs Israel because they want the power of Israel’s U.S. masters to be protected. It is U.S. might that underwrites the Australian capitalists’ plunder of PNG, Fiji, East Timor and other Pacific and Southeast Asian countries. Furthermore, Australia’s rulers are counting on their U.S. allies to spearhead the destruction of the socialistic rule in China that an exploiting class in the Asia-Western Pacific region finds so threatening to its own rule.
The Israeli regime is not imperialism’s only attack dog. The anti-working-class Taiwanese regime has long been built up by the capitalist powers to be an unsinkable aircraft carrier targeting the Chinese workers state. For its part, imperialism’s Ukraine attack dog has been designated the task of waging a proxy war against Russia and the anti-Western inclined, Russian- speaking community in Eastern Ukraine. Although Russia is itself ruled by a reactionary capitalist class, Russia and the Russian-speaking East of Ukraine are too independent for the Western masters of the world to tolerate. That is why twelve days ago, Australia’s government announced that it was sending yet another $100 million of weapons to Ukraine.
There is a perverse “solidarity” among imperialism’s attack dogs.The Taiwanese and Ukrainian regimes are among Israel’s most rabid supporters. Most significantly, the very same U.S. law that granted $A21 billion in weapons to Israel, gave billions in military aid to Taiwan and an incredible $92 billion (!!) to Ukraine. This proves just how much imperialist support for Israel and their opposition to the Chinese workers state and to unbowed Russia go hand in hand. Conversely, true support for the Palestinian people means standing for the defence of socialistic rule in China and taking the side of Russia and Russian-speaking Eastern Ukraine against NATO and its Ukraine proxies. Unfortunately, some of the groups supporting Palestine are actually backing Israel’s Western masters in their proxy campaigns. The Socialist Alternative and Socialist Alliance groups even back imperialist military support for their Ukrainian proxies. Yet, it is very obvious that the liberation of Palestine requires the weakening and not the strengthening of Israel’s Western imperialist backers.
WAGE POLITICAL WAR AGAINST THE AUSTRALIAN CAPITALIST RULING CLASS THAT IS PARTICIPATING IN ISRAEL’S GENOCIDE!
Given how much Israel’s terror depends on imperialism’s support, it is crucial that the pro-Palestine movement becomes a movement that fights to degrade the imperialists by opposing them on every single one of their battlefronts. Most of all, the movement here must become a movement of unyielding opposition to Australia’s capitalist ruling class. For Australia’s rulers will not be swayed one bit by appeals to their conscience. The only thing that will make them retreat from their support for Israel is the prospect of a resistance movement that undermines their rule. There are aspects of today’s movement that are promising. Aboriginal speakers have powerfully exposed the connection between the rulers’ brutal oppression of Aboriginal people and their support for Israel’s terror. Meanwhile, protesters have aptly chanted: “Albanese Your Hands are Red, Fifteen Thousand Children Dead!” When the ruling class hears such determined opposition and see activists making the connection between their support for Israel and their tyranny at home, it makes them very worried.
However, there are other aspects of the pro-Palestine movement that will be a relief to Australia’s ruling class. They are reassured when they see some at the protests appealing to them to be “independent of the U.S.” To be sure, the capitalist rulers do not agree with this appeal as their alliance with the U.S. is in their own interests. But the ruling class will be comforted that those pushing such calls are only appealing to them to change their policy, rather than staunchly opposing them as supporters of genocide, as some protest chants are doing. Other calls have downplayed the crimes of the Australian government by promoting the illusion that it could be a positive force for the Palestinian cause; or by appealing to the government “to do more to oppose Israel’s war.” Do more?! Far from having done anything at all to defend the Palestinian people, this government has been actively supporting Israel’s slaughter. Among those consciously pulling the movement back from unyielding opposition to the Australian ruling class are ALP “Left” forces, soft-on-Labor groups and pro-ALP union officials who have joined the pro-Palestine protests. The Greens are also pushing in this direction. For although individual Greens politicians like Mehreen Faruqi have spoken up against Israel’s terror, the fact is that the Greens ultimately uphold the rule of the capitalist class whose interests lie with supporting Israel. That is why when the Greens were part of a de facto coalition government with the ALP from August 2010 to February 2013, the Australian government continued to back Israel’s subjugation of Palestine. Today, the Greens German counterparts and the Greens foreign minister of Germany, Annalena Baerbock, are among the most rabid supporters of Israel.
Although some consciously hold back the movement from becoming one of staunch opposition to Australia’s rulers, in other cases, one and the same activists simultaneously hold sentiments of intransigent opposition to the capitalist rulers alongside support for slogans that pull the movement back from such a direction. Therefore, the duty of all pro-Palestine activists who understand the need for resolute opposition to the capitalist rulers is to strengthen such attitudes amongst fellow activists, while dispelling illusions in the potential benovelence of Australia’s capitalist class. The same political struggle is needed within our unions in order to turn verbal union statements in solidarity with Palestine into concrete actions – such as wharfies’ action refusing to load and unload Zim ships. This struggle to turn our unions into bodies of relentless opposition to Australia’s capitalist class is precisely what is also needed to make our unions weapons in the struggle to secure real wage rises, win a massive increase in public housing to drive down rents and fight for the conversion of casual jobs into secure ones. In short, the struggle to mobilise the workers movement in support of Palestine is one and the same struggle as the fight for workers rights and the struggle to oppose imperialism on all its battlefronts.
Let’s force Australia’s rulers to pull back from their support for Israel’s genocide! Let’s do this by making the pro-Palestine and union movements forces of unrelenting opposition to the capitalist rulers! If we succeed, we will inspire similar struggles in the U.S. and other Western countries. Two and a half million people in Gaza need us to succeed!
Photo Above: Firefighters put out flames in buildings in the central Maisky market in the eastern Ukrainian city of Donetsk hit by shelling from Ukrainian forces on 13 June. Five people were killed in the Ukrainian attack including one child. Residential areas, hospitals and markets in the city, which is controlled by pro-Russian separatists, have been repeatedly hit by Ukrainian artillery attacks over the last eight years. Such attacks have escalated this month causing dozens of civilians to be killed. Photo credit: Stringer/Reuters
Don’t Let the Western Capitalist Rulers Reinforce Their Tyranny Over the World!
Defeat U.S., British, Australian and German Imperialism’s Proxy War to Weaken and Stifle Russia!
26 June 2022: Last month U.S. president Joe Biden signed a law granting Ukraine $US40 billion in military supplies and economic aid in order to sustain its war against Russia. The package is so huge that the direct military component of it amounts to almost five times Ukraine’s total 2020 defence expenditure! Many U.S. allies, including Britain, Denmark, Germany, France, Poland, Norway, Estonia, Sweden and the Czech Republic have also been rapidly increasing their military support to Kiev. Here, the former Morrison Liberal government and the current Labor Albanese government have sent Ukraine’s authoritarian regime hundreds of millions of dollars of military equipment including howitzers (long-range artillery) and dozens of armored vehicles.
The level of backing to Ukraine by the Western imperialist ruling classes has risen dramatically since the early weeks of the Russian intervention. In our statement written thirteen days after the Russian invasion, we stated that: “The West’s aid to Ukraine is not at a level aimed at achieving total Ukrainian victory but rather at bleeding Russia over a long period. Thus, much of the weaponry that the Western imperialists have supplied to Ukraine, like hand-held missiles and rockets, is most suitable for a guerilla war against Russia… Currently therefore, we cannot say that the large amounts of Western support to Ukraine is equivalent to the U.S., NATO and Australia being directly at war with Russia.” We qualified that observation by stating that, “It is, of course, possible that the West could qualitatively change their level of assistance.” Well, what we labelled then as a possibilityhas now become the reality. High on their own propaganda that they have been feeding the masses that Kiev is actually winning the war, Washington and its allies have been pumping the Ukrainian regime’s war campaign with ever greater military assistance. In the wake of the U.S. congress passing the $US40 billion aid package to Ukraine, the politically connected American think tank, Centre for Strategic & International Studies, stated that:
“For the first five weeks of the conflict, military support to Ukraine averaged about $30 million a day (excluding economic and humanitarian support and the costs of U.S. forces deployed to Europe for the crisis). In April, a series of $800 million aid packages implied a level of $100 million a day. This package increases the aid level to $135 million a day.”
It is not just the level of military assistance that has changed but the character of it. Washington and Co. have been sending ever heavier and more sophisticated weapons to the Ukrainian regime. This includes anti-aircraft batteries, advanced long-range anti-ship missiles, drones, tanks and self-propelled howitzers. Most notably, this month the Biden administration started sending the Ukrainian regime advanced HIMARS multiple-launch guided rocket systems that have much greater range than Ukraine’s existing artillery systems. Meanwhile, as well as providing crucial intelligence assistance to Ukraine and training large numbers of Ukrainian troops in bases in Germany, Britain and France, Western imperialist militaries now have troops on the ground in Ukraine directly training and organising Kiev’s forces. Several Western mainstream media outlets reported that in mid-April British special forces moved into Kiev to assist the Ukrainian military. CIA spies are also reportedly now operating within Ukraine as are U.S. commandos.
Alongside their stepped up military intervention, the Western imperialists have greatly ramped up their economic sanctions on Russia. They have also dialed up the intensity of their propaganda war. Initially the tycoon-owned and government-run media outlets in the U.S., Europe and Australia, as part of their anti-Russia war propaganda, claimed that Russia was killing many civilians by accident in the course of air and artillery strikes on military targets. Later, the Western media started lying through their teeth by claiming that Russia was deliberately bombing residential areas, schools and hospitals. Then they escalated their propaganda still further by working with the Ukrainian regime and Western “NGOs”, intelligence agencies and public relations consultants to claim that Russian troops had senselessly massacred a large number of Ukrainian civilians while withdrawing from towns north of Kiev, like Bucha. Given that the Russian withdrawal from this region was planned and announced days beforehand as part of her military’s overall strategic plan, the Western media’s claims are extremely hard to believe. Why would Russian troops making an orderly withdrawal, in which they were able to take all their working heavy weapons with them, choose to leave behind supposedly indiscriminately slaughtered civilians on the side of the road in the perfect position to be used as propaganda against them?
When it comes to lying propaganda, the most rabid outlets have been the BBC, the Australia regime’s ABC and the German government’s Deutsche Welle – the latter spewing out propaganda with all the zeal and dishonesty of their political forebears in Joseph Goebbels’ Nazi propaganda machine. In the first few weeks after Russia began its operation on February 24, these news outlets, while bombarding their populations with blanket anti-Russia propaganda, on rare occasions did made oblique references as to why many Russian speaking people in Ukraine’s eastern Donbass region were welcoming of the Russian intervention. On still rarer occasions they did mention the fact that many Russia-speaking people had been killed during the course of an eight year regional conflict that preceded the Russian intervention. A very small number of outlets briefly also reported, while downplaying the significance of these crimes, that Ukrainian soldiers had been abusing and torturing Russian prisoners of war. Yet in the weeks since, even the smallest pretense of balanced reporting has disappeared entirely from the Western media. Any, even limp, criticism of the Ukrainian regime and its military has been completely purged from all reports. The fact that Ukrainian troops and fascist paramilitaries have been shelling residential areas in Donbass cities held by pro-Russian forces has been completely whitewashed. So has the overwhelming evidence that Ukrainian forces have been using civilians as human shields by hiding in residential areas, schools and hospitals; and by preventing civilians from leaving the underground bunkers where Ukrainian forces established bases in their now defeated strongholds of Mariupol and Severodonetsk.
The intensifying character of the Western imperialists’ intervention into Ukraine can be gleaned by examining their media’s coverage of Ukraine’s fascist paramilitary forces. After Ukraine had a U.S.-backed right-wing coup in 2014 and war erupted in the eastern part of the country, the Western mainstream media did their best to downplay the spearhead role played by fascist forces in both the coup and the ensuing war. Nevertheless, there were occasional reports in the Western media highlighting the extreme white supremacist and anti-Semitic character of Ukraine’s Azov paramilitaries and the surge in racist violent attacks by such forces against Ukraine’s Roma community, pro-Russia activists and feminists. However, after Russia’s February 24 intervention such reports largely vanished. The executions of pro-Russia civilians by the likes of the Azov regiment was simply not reported by the Western media. Instead of the Azov being described as what they are – neo-Nazi fascists – the Western media used the less damning and vaguer term, “far right.” Then, as the U.S. and its allies stepped up their support for Ukraine by several gears, even that latter description was dropped. The likes of the BBC even started claiming that statements about the racist and neo-Nazi character of the Azov “have been widely discredited” … even though outlets such as their own did at one time occasionally make such “discredited” reports themselves! Most recently, when large numbers of the Mariupol-based Azov soldiers were trapped (along with an apparently smaller number of regular Ukrainian troops) in underground bunkers in a Mariupol steel works, the supposedly “democratic” Western media started positively lionizing the Azov white supremacists as heroes!
The Changed Character of This Conflict
In summary, since late March, America’s rulers and their allies have greatly ramped up their military, economic and political support to Ukraine in its war against Russia. We can now clearly say that this Ukraine-Russia war has effectively become an indirect war of the U.S. rulers and their NATO, Australian, Japanese and New Zealand imperialist allies against Russia, with Ukraine acting as the proxy. The same Western capitalist ruling classes waging a proxy war against Russia are the biggest bullies and oppressors of the world’s peoples. It is they who destroyed Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, devastated Syria through a years-long proxy war, killed thousands of civilians in their 1999 bombing of Yugoslavia, occupied and terrorised the people of Somalia and in the specific case of Australia’s rulers, caused the death of up to 20,000 people after they orchestrated a decade-long war and blockade of the South Pacific island of Bougainville in the late 20th century after the people there rose up against the arrogant trampling of their rights by an Australian-owned mining company. Therefore, it is in the interests of the working class of the world and all the people subjugated by imperialism to see the Western imperialists and their Ukrainian proxies defeated in this war. Such a defeat would weaken the ability of the imperialists to mobilise further predatory interventions abroad. It would also deter their plans to use Taiwan as a proxy to pressure socialistic China or even to incite a world war against the socialistic giant. Moreover, any setback for the U.S. imperialists and their allies in this proxy war would give encouragement to the resistance struggles of all those being subjugated by the U.S. and its allies elsewhere, like the Palestinian people suffering under incessant Israeli terror. More generally, a defeat for the Western powers in their Ukraine proxy war could only encourage the toiling masses of Africa, Latin America, the South Pacific and most of Asia to resist in their own lands the various Western capitalists that super-exploit labour, plunder natural resources, leach loan interest repayments, seize markets and manipulate and stand over governments. Within the Western countries themselves, a defeat for the capitalist ruling classes in their proxy war would weaken their authority. It would thus open opportunities for the working class and oppressed to wage mass resistance against soaring rents and food and fuel prices, plummeting real wages, the incessant expansion of insecure work forms and brutal racist oppression of persecuted communities. Therefore, the workers movement in Australia and other imperialist countries must stop the military aid to Ukraine and demand the lifting of all sanctions against Russia!
To be sure, Russia is also ruled by a greedy capitalist class. Moreover, economic realities drive this class to seek to be an imperialist ruling class – that is a capitalist class that not only extracts profits from exploiting workers in their own country but which also reaps substantial wealth through the super-exploitation and economic domination of poorer countries. Yet, although being the world’s number two military power and with a strong industrial and technological base inherited from the days of the USSR, currently the Russian ruling class neither fully has the level of capital needed to displace the current imperialist players as the main subjugators of “Third World” economies nor the close relationship with an existing imperialist player that would allow them to prise their way into the imperialist big league without the possession of such a huge level of capital. That is why, although Russia’s capitalist ruling class has, to a limited extent, aspects of an imperialist country-dependent country relationship with certain neighbouring ex-Soviet countries, it is overwhelmingly not Russian capitalists but American, British, German, Japanese, Australian, French, Canadian and other Western bankers, mining bosses and owners of industrial and agricultural corporations that plunder and leach from the poorer countries of developing Asia, the South Pacific, Africa, the Middle East and Latin America (note that although mutually antagonistic, Russia’s relationship with Ukraine prior to the current war was not an imperialist country-dependent country one and, just like Russia, Ukraine also inherited a good chunk of the industrial, technological and military might of the former Soviet Union and the highly educated, technically literate population nurtured in the Soviet Union). And it is the Western states enforcing the interests of its capitalists, rather than the Russian state, that have been muscling in on the state affairs of dependent and neo-colonial countries, orchestrating “color revolutions” to overthrow disobedient governments there and threatening dissident countries with outright invasion. Let us not lose sight of the fact that it is the U.S and its allies and not Putin’s Russia that invaded and devastated Iraq, Somalia, Afghanistan and Libya and which is propping up Israel’s bloody war on the Palestinian people and Saudi Arabia’s war on the people of Yemen. All this is why, as reactionary as Russia’s capitalist rulers are, a victory for Russia against the Western ruling classes and the latter’s Ukrainian proxy will encourage anti-imperialist struggles by the masses in the “Third World” countries, alongside spurring class struggle by the working class within the West against their own capitalist rulers. Whereas Russia’s defeat at the hands of the Western powers and their Ukrainian proxy will embolden the Western imperialists to further subjugate the peoples of developing Asia, the South Pacific, Africa, the Middle East and Latin America and to, at home, more aggressively attack workers’ real wages and the rights of persecuted minority communities.
For socialists based in Western countries, the changed character of the Ukraine-Russia war does not substantially affect our main tasks. From the very start of the Russian intervention, the response of leftists in the West needed to be guided by the understanding that it is the Western imperialist rulers and not Putin’s ambitious capitalist regime who are the main tyrants lording it over the world’s peoples. Moreover, based on the Leninist principle that the main enemy of the working class in an imperialist country are their own capitalist rulers, socialists in Australia would have to focus on opposing the intervention of the Australian ruling class into this war and on opposing first and foremost the side in this war that these imperialist rulers’ are supporting, which is Ukraine. Sticking by these principles, Trotskyist Platform statements written early on in the war had as their main headline: “Oppose Western Imperialism’s Provocative and Hypocritical Interference in Ukraine and Oppose Sanctions Against Russia! No to NATO Expansion! No U.S./Australian arms to Ukraine!” These remain the punchlines of the stance that needs to be taken by the Left and workers movement in Australia.
Where the changed character of the conflict does make a clear practical difference is in the work required of leftists in Russia. In our statement written in the early days of the conflict, we called for the working classes of Ukraine and Russia to unite to oppose the war campaign of each of their respective rulers, while simultaneously insisting that communists in Russia should be intransigently opposed to any pro-NATO or other pro-Western “anti-war” groupings and should keep any of their anti-war actions strictly separate from such forces. Today, in the wake of the changed character of the war, we of course still say that the workers of Ukraine should struggle against the war campaign of their own capitalist rulers. However, given that this war has become a proxy war of the united imperialist powers to bring to heel a mostly non-imperialist power in Russia, a war in which the working class of the world has a side against the imperialists, then we say that the Russian working class should no longer oppose the war campaign of their own ruling class. They should of course continue the class struggle and advance towards the future overthrow of the Russian capitalist exploiting class, which remains no less their enemy, but they should ensure that any such struggle does not disrupt the war effort against the U.S.-led imperialists and their Ukrainian proxies.
Although the changed nature of the war means that Russian leftists should no longer oppose Russia’s war campaign, we say that they should not positively support it either. For Russian leftists to actively support the war campaign of their own rulers – for example by participating in pro-Russian Army rallies – would associate the Left with Russian nationalism and patriotism. Although patriotic sentiments in Russia in part arise from the unfair treatment of Russia by Western imperial powers and from the masses’ resentment at the devastation and diminished status that Russia was pushed into following the Western-orchestrated destruction of the Soviet Union, Russian patriotism damages working-class struggle. For it ties workers to their ambitious capitalist exploiters on the basis of a non-existent “common national interest.” Such Russian patriotism is therefore overall reactionary, which is why Russian revolutionary leader Lenin fought tooth and nail against it in the years leading up to the 1917 October socialist revolution. Lenin’s anti-patriotic stance remains valid today because although Russia is not a full-fledged imperialist power as it was in pre-Soviet times, it is also not simply a semi-colonial or dependent country subjugated by imperialism as say Iraq, Syria, Libya and Somalia were (and still are today). Therefore a victory for Russia in this war would have a very different effect on Russia’s working class than the impact on, say, the Iraqi toiling masses had they been able to resoundingly defeat the 2003 U.S., British and Australian invasion. Such an outcome in the Iraq War would have generated a resounding sentiment among the Iraqi toilers that: “we have just beaten off a direct invasion from the imperialist overlords, it is time for us to finish off the local capitalist ruling class that are so dependent on and economically tied to these imperialists.” In contrast, a Russian victory in this current war would give the Russian capitalist ruling class renewed authority, while reinforcing Great Russian chauvinism and all manner of social reaction. This has already been evident in the last few weeks coinciding with increasing Russian battlefield victories. Some nationalist Russian celebrities like famous actress and media personality, Maria Shukshina, have felt emboldened to denounce Russia’s national minorities. Meanwhile, earlier this month, Russian politicians introduced a homophobic bill to parliament that will unleash draconian fines for people “promoting non-traditional sexual relations” (a bill that spits on the traditions of Russia’s 1917 Bolshevik Revolution that had made Russia the first large country in the world to decriminalise all gay and lesbian sexual activity).
Therefore, while Russian communists should not oppose Russia’s war efforts they must oppose any Great Russian chauvinism and social reaction inflamed by Russia’s battlefield successes. They must also insist that in Donbass territories conquered by Russian troops and their local Donetsk and Luhansk republic allies, the terms of oppression are not simply reversed. In other words where it was formerly Russian speakers who were oppressed, Ukrainian speakers should not now be discriminated against. That means that Russian communists should insist on Ukrainian becoming a joint official language in all the Russian-controlled Donbass territories and that those people who choose to live in the Russian-controlled territories for political or economic reasons but who wish to retain their links to Ukrainian language and culture are fully able to do so. Moreover, Russian leftists should stand for the expulsion of all Russian fascists from the Donbass. Although the component of fascists within the pro-Russia Donetsk and Luhansk forces is far less than in the Ukrainian forces, Russian fascists like the Russian National Unity group have had a presence. Authentic Russian communists should also oppose any internal party witch-hunts and state repression against several parliamentarians from the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (CPRF) who have defied their party’s line and opposed Russia’s war campaign. Russian leftists should salute the internationalist instincts of these dissenting CPRF members and their courage in opposing their own capitalist ruling class, while patiently explaining to these comrades why their stance is mistaken given that this has become an imperialist proxy war against, largely, non-imperialist Russia.
At the same Russian communists should oppose and mercilessly condemn any pro-NATO/pro-Western opponents of the war campaign – like supporters of jailed opposition politician Alexei Navalny. For while a Russian military victory would inflame social reaction within Russia, a victory for NATO’s Ukrainian proxies would also be harmful to the class struggle in Russia. Such an outcome would demoralise the masses, greatly embolden the pro-imperialist wing of the Russian capitalist ruling class and may well lead to the Russian working class not only having to face their own local exploiting class but Western imperialists again able to place their dirty paws upon Russia (as they did in the first decade and a half after the early 1990s capitalist counterrevolution that destroyed socialistic rule in Russia, Ukraine and the other parts of the former USSR). The reality is that while a victory for Russia in this war would be in the interests of the working class and oppressed in all of the rest of the world, any outcome to this war will be harmful to the working class movement in Russia – other than if victory for Russia is partly or mostly achieved as a result of the anti-imperialist mobilisation of the working class in the imperialist centres and/or significant resistance by a section of the Ukrainian masses against their own capitalist rulers and its war campaign. Hence our position that while in the rest of the world the workers movement should energetically work for the defeat of the Western imperialists and their Ukrainian proxy, within Russia the working class should continue the class struggle and the building of a revolutionary socialist movement without either impeding or supporting Moscow’s war effort. The best way for workers and leftists in Australia to assist the class-struggle of the Russian working class and to promote internationalist sentiments amongst the Russian masses is to mobilise against the proxy war that our “own” rulers are waging against Russia.
We are well aware that the stance that we advocate for Russian communists does not fit neatly into either the position of revolutionary defensism that Leninists advocate for semi-colonial and other dependent countries in wars with imperialist power/s or the stance of revolutionary defeatism that Leninists call for, either in a clash between rival imperialist powers or in a war between non-imperialist states of a similar level of development. Our position however flows from the unique nature and history of today’s Russia. Prior to the 1917 Russian Revolution, capitalist Russia was an imperialist “great power” but the most economically backward of the imperialist powers. She was able to grab a share of the bounty of imperialist exploitation largely by acting as the enforcers in the East of the capital investments of wealthier imperialist powers like Britain and France. After the 1917 socialist revolution, Russia not only ceased to be ruled by capitalists but she, therefore, also ceased to be an imperialist exploiter. Indeed just like today’s Red China, the socialistic USSR that Soviet Russia was part of provided great economic and development assistance to ex-colonial countries – in Africa, Latin America, the Middle East and South Asia in particular – that allowed them to achieve a certain independence from Western imperialism that they would not have otherwise had. The advantages of the USSR’s socialist system meant that Russia, as part of the USSR, not only rose to become the world’s equal first military power but also became an industrial and scientific powerhouse much closer to the level of the most advanced countries than Russia had been in pre-1917 times. Therefore, when capitalist rule was re-established in Russia in the early 1990s, theoretically the new Russian capitalist class was in a position to play a relatively bigger role in imperialist looting than their pre-1917 forebears were able to do. However, the capitalist counterrevolution led to a shocking economic decline in Russia and the stunning weakening of her Soviet-inherited industrial base. This only started to be turned around in the twenty-first century after a sharp rise in oil prices greatly boosted the export income of energy-rich Russia and after the Russian capitalist ruling class got their act together somewhat and reduced their previously rampant level of personal mafia-like criminality for the sake of the overall interests of their class. However, Russia’s post-Soviet capitalist rulers face a still greater obstacle to their wish to re-build a version of the Tsarist empire. For the domination of most of the world has already been divided up amongst pre-existing imperial powers. Facing this situation, the new Russian capitalist class does not quite possess the capital required to shove aside existing players and muscle themselves into an imperialist position. Moreover, none of the existing imperialist powers has been willing to partner with Russia. With senile capitalism in economic decline, none of these imperialists is willing or able to afford to share a significant part of the imperialist loot with Russia should they agree to partner with her. Thus, the Russian capitalist class’ other route to sharing in imperialist plunder is, for the moment, also blocked. We are left with a country that matches the U.S. in nuclear weapons strength, which possesses considerable remnants of the industrial and technological strength inherited from Soviet times and that has a per capita income (in PPP terms) within 20% of that of imperialist Portugal but which is still not currently a full fledged imperialist power and yet clearly cannot be considered an imperialist-dependent or subjugated country either.
It should be noted that, in some sense, our exposition of the tasks of leftists in Russia is somewhat academic. We have no base there and little ability to influence the politics of communists in that country. However, stating the line that we believe should be taken by Russian socialists in the wake of the changed character of this current war does, in passing, help to make clearer the stance that must be taken by leftists in Australia. In particular it helps to underscore how urgent it is that socialists in Australia and other imperialist countries mobilise to oppose their regimes’ massive war assistance to Ukraine.
What is Driving the Western Imperialists to Wage a Proxy War on Russia?
To some degree, this war has been an anti-Russia proxy war of Washington and its allies from the beginning. The U.S. and NATO provoked this war by threateningly expanding NATO eastwards towards Russia and by encouraging Ukraine’s course towards joining NATO. Then, when in the days leading up to the Russian intervention, Ukrainian president Zelensky seemed to be open to a compromise deal with Moscow facilitated by French and German diplomatic efforts, Washington and Ukraine’s influential fascist groups pressured Zelensky to walk away from the deal. The U.S. ruling class did much to provoke the Russian intervention. Indeed, part of Russia’s reason for invading Ukraine was a quite understandable wish to pre-emptively prevent NATO forces and NATO missiles being placed on her borders.
However, there were initially other more significant reasons for Russia’s February 24 intervention. For one, Russia’s rulers had faced considerable public pressure to come to the aid of the Russian-speaking population in Ukraine’s eastern Donbass region who had been brutally oppressed by Ukraine’s military and even more cruelly by its ultra-nationalist paramilitary forces. A large chunk of the Russian-speaking population in this region had rebelled against the Kiev regime ever since anti-Russia, Ukrainian nationalist forces seized power in Kiev in a 2014 right-wing coup. However, in coming to the aid of the Russian-speaking Donbass rebels, Moscow has not merely been responding to public pressure and not simply acting out of nationalist concern for fellow Russian speakers. By either bringing the Donbass into Russia or making it an independent country close to Russia, Russia’s capitalist rulers want to secure markets and raw materials in this heavily industrialised region after having been squeezed out of access to the broader Ukrainian market following Ukraine’s pro-Western 2014 coup. Moreover, in pushing into territory in Ukraine beyond that where the mass of the population overwhelmingly wants to be part of, or associated with, Russia, Moscow is pursuing the innate capitalist drive to maximise the size of secure markets by maximising territory. Similarly, by insisting on forcibly maintaining the entire Donbass within its territory when much of the Russian-speaking population in at least large parts of this region would prefer to be part of, or associated with, Russia, the Ukrainian regime is also driven by the capitalist imperative to maximise territories. The faltering of their respective capitalist economies made this capitalist squabble for territory between Russia and Ukraine all the more desperate on both sides. Both Russia and Ukraine were beset by rampant inflation even prior to the outbreak of this war while Ukraine’s economy was actually contracting in per capita terms. Moreover, by ramping up nationalism during their respective war drives, the capitalist ruling classes in both Ukraine and Russia could divert the anger of the working class masses away from themselves. And the masses in both countries had much to be furious about. In both countries, the inability of their capitalist systems to protect their populations from COVID led to a terrible carnage many times greater than the numbers of people who have thus far died from this current war – with over 105,000 deaths in Ukraine by the start of the war and nearly 350,000 in Russia. In Ukraine, there had been such anger at persistently high unemployment, falling living standards and rampant corruption that by January last year, the opposition party advocating closer ties with Russia was leading in opinion polls in even the non-rebel held parts of the country. Meanwhile, in Russia, the capitalist regime had been on the receiving end of the people’s ongoing anger over massive inequality and over a 2019 pension reform that greatly increased the age at which Russian people can receive pensions. All these factors driving the initially squalid inter-capitalist war between Ukraine and Russia remain today. But they have now been overshadowed by the now dominant axis of the conflict – a proxy war of the Western imperialist powers aimed at bringing to heel its Russian, potential capitalist rival. What had been an important subsidiary aspect of the conflict has become the main feature of the war. Indeed in late April, U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin made clear that Washington’s involvement in this war was not even mainly about the Ukraine issue itself. Austin told reporters that, “we want to see Russia weakened.”
So why do the Western imperialists want to weaken Russia? The answer to this question has nothing to do with the two main rationales given by Washington, Canberra and Co. for their heavy-handed intervention into this conflict. One of these rationales is that they are seeking to protect the people of Ukraine. Yet everything that the Western capitalist ruling classes have done over the past decades has shown how little they care for the well-being of the Ukrainian masses. It was these imperialists that orchestrated the early 1990s capitalist counterrevolution there. It was that counterrevolution that directly led to the mass privatisation that devastated the living standards of Ukraine’s working class people, weakened the technological and industrial base of the country (that when part of the socialistic USSR was at such a high level that she was able to play a key role in building the world’s largest aircraft – the magnificent Antonov An-225) and paved the way for the terrifying growth of violent fascist groups. Then in 2014, the U.S., British and EU ruling classes promoted a right-wing coup that overthrew Ukraine’s elected government and brought right-wing extremists into key parts of Ukraine’s state machinery. Now the imperialists are fighting a proxy war to the last drop of Ukrainian blood in order to reinforce their tyranny over the world.
The second rationale given by the imperialists for their proxy war against Russia is the claim that they are standing up for “democracy” against “authoritarianism”. This is laughable given that the U.S., European and Australian governments have been busy censoring any voices questioning their narrative on this war, including by outright banning Russian media outlets from broadcasting in their countries. Meanwhile just yesterday, the courts of the U.S. regime – the supposed standard bearer of “liberal democracy” – made a ruling that will see women in almost half of America’s states lose one of the most basic human rights – the right to abortion. Now that is authoritarian!
As for the Ukrainian regime that is being supported by the Western imperialists, it is very far from being a bastion of “democracy” – even in the sense of being a capitalist “democracy” where certain freedoms associated with elected parliaments are mixed in with total domination of the state and politics by the wealthy capitalists. Let’s not forget that in the eight years preceding this war, the Ukrainian regime had brutally killed thousands of Russian speaking people by indiscriminately shelling territories in the country’s eastern Donbass region that were held by pro-Russia rebels. Now, they have banned nearly a dozen centrist and leftist parties including the country’s biggest opposition party: the Opposition Platform — For Life. Even in the years preceding this war, Ukrainian authorities jailed large numbers of pro-Russia and leftist opposition activists. Meanwhile, extreme Ukrainian nationalists murdered journalists, social activists and those with pro-Russia sentiments, with the perpetrators rarely identified, let alone punished. Thoroughly corrupt and dominated by powerful oligarchs, the Ukrainian capitalist order is in many ways similar to Russia’s. But it is even more repressive. For example, while demonstrations by staunch pro-communist groups have often been attacked by police in Russia, in Ukraine, absolutelyall activity by the large Communist Party of Ukraine – including its participation in elections – and other pro-communist groups has been prohibited for the last several years. Meanwhile, the Ukrainian regime has introduced draconian laws that can see anyone who displays a communist or Soviet flag or sings communist or Soviet anthems jailed for five years. Moreover, while Russian government politicians have often allied with far-right politicians, in the Ukraine fascists have actually been brought into key positions in the country’s state machinery, while large neo-Nazi paramilitary groups like the Azov and Aidar battalions have been officially incorporated into Ukraine’s National Guard. The racist nature of the Ukrainian state has indeed been very evident during this war. Ukrainian border guards have racially abused dark-skinned international students (from places like Nigeria, Zimbabwe and India) fleeing the war and forced international students approaching the border to alight from vehicles and walk huge distances in freezing weather to get to the border so that Ukrainians could use their vehicles instead.
So what are the real reasons for Washington and its allies’ proxy war against Russia? For one they want to maintain their prized access to the Ukrainian market. Before 2014, Russia was the main source of Ukraine’s imports. However, after Washington and the EU powers orchestrated the 2014 anti-Russia, right-wing coup in Kiev, much of Russia’s exports to Ukraine were replaced by ones from Germany, the U.S., Poland, Italy and France. Today, the capitalist rulers of these latter countries want to maintain this post-2014 status quo. They know that a sizable chunk of this market would be lost should the rich Donbass region and Ukraine’s south end up acceding to Russia or becoming pro-Moscow independent states. However as significant as this reason is – especially to EU governments – it is not the main factor driving Western ruling classes to wage a proxy war against Russia. Mainly, Washington and its allies want to prevent Russia emerging as an imperialist competitor and instead seek to reduce her to a subordinate position. Especially with their own economies faltering, the existing imperial powers cannot afford to have a new imperialist player intruding on their neocolonial exploitation of Latin America, Africa, South Asia, Southeast Asia, West Asia and the Pacific. Moreover, not only are the existing imperialists unwilling to accept a new imperialist rival they cannot even tolerate a non-imperialist state being strong enough to obstruct their ambitions. Thus, the Western imperialists hope to not only suppress Russia’s great power aspirations but seek to weaken her through a combination of military blows from their Ukrainian proxies and grinding economic sanctions. To be sure, they know that given that Russia is a formidable military and technological power, they will not be able to lord it over Russia in the same neocolonial manner that, say, Australian imperialism subjugates Papua New Guinea or the U.S. ruling class exploits the Philippines. However, by weakening Russia, the Western imperialists hope to reduce her to the humiliated condition that she was in during the first fifteen years or so after the 1991-92 capitalist counterrevolution there. During those years, the U.S. and European powers were able to dictate economic policy to Russia while grabbing prized access to her markets and ownership of chunks of Russia’s industrial and mining sectors as well. Just as importantly for the Western ruling classes, a debilitated Russia would be easier for them to elbow out of the way when seeking to grab markets and trade opportunities in the ex-Soviet countries of Central Asia and the South Caucasus.
Defend Socialistic China!
It is important to be aware that the imperialist proxy war against Russia is not only about Russia itself. Following their humiliating defeat in Afghanistan, the U.S. and Australian ruling classes, in particular, hope that what they intend to be a successful proxy war against Russia will restore – both in the eyes of their own populations and in the sentiments of other countries – credibility to their practice of throwing their military weight around. Most importantly for the Western ruling classes, this proxy war is meant to be an indirect slap against their main strategic target: the Peoples Republic of China (PRC). The Western capitalist powers see China as the main threat to their domination of the world because, unlike Russia which is just another capitalist country, albeit one that is currently obstructive to their interests, China is a socialistic country. Even though China’s march towards socialism remains incomplete, prone to veer of course and relentlessly pelted by internal and external capitalist enemies, the imperialist ruling classes of the U.S., Britain, Germany, Australia, Japan and other Western ruling classes understand that the mere existence of such a giant and evermore successful socialistic power is an existential threat to their imperialist interests. For not only is the non-imperialist PRC’s cooperation with developing countries allowing some of these countries to, right now, uplift themselves to the extent that they can somewhat loosen the stranglehold of Western imperialism over their countries, in the longer term, China’s ever-expanding achievements made possible by her 1949 anti-capitalist revolution could encourage the masses of other ex-colonial countries to also take the path of socialist revolution to decisively free themselves from Western domination. Even more threateningly for the Western exploiting classes, as China’s per capita income heads towards approaching closer to that of their own countries in future years, the working class masses in their own countries could start to look more favourably upon the PRC and, eventually, even start demanding socialism at home too.
So how does waging a proxy war against Russia advance the imperialist drive against Red China? For starters, aware that the hostility that they have unleashed – for very different reasons – against China and Russia has pushed these two non-Western powers closer together, the Western imperialists hope that their massive propaganda war launched against Russia following Putin’s Ukraine invasion will, by association, also tarnish the PRC. In this way they intend to intensify political pressure against socialistic China. Indeed, the imperialists’ increased political attacks on the PRC over the last four months have actually produced some tangible results for them. It seems to have encouraged softer-on-imperialism, more rightist factions of China’s ruling Communist Party (centred on the party’s number two ranked figure, premier Li Keqiang, and number four ranked politician, Wang Yang) to gain greater influence. In recent months they have been able to reduce the momentum of president Xi Jinping’s crackdown on greedy rich, tech-sector capitalists and slow his “common prosperity” drive to reduce inequality.
Secondly, the U.S. and its allies intend their military support to Ukraine and economic sanctions against Russia to enfeeble Russia to the point that, at minimum, she will not be able to obstruct any U.S./NATO/Australian military provocations against China. In their best case scenario, they hope that they can cause such military losses for Russia in Ukraine and such economic pain for her people that it will trigger a “colour revolution” there that will replace the Russian nationalist Putin regime with a regime subservient to Washington and its allies – that is, a pro-Western regime that may even enlist Russia in the imperialists’ Cold War drive to crush socialistic rule in China. Thirdly, in waging their increasingly all-out proxy war against Russia, the Western imperialists are trialing and perfecting the methods that they seek to one day unleash against Red China, using Taiwan or other capitalist regimes neighbouring China as their proxies.
For the very same reasons that it is in the interests of the Western capitalist exploiters to oppose the Chinese workers state it is in the interests of the working class masses in their own countries – and indeed of the entire world – to defend the PRC. The indirect weakening of imperialism’s grip over its former colonies resulting from China’s rise is not only welcome news for the peoples of the Pacific, Africa, Latin America and developing Asia it is also good for the working class people living in the imperialist centres. A reduction in the ability of Western multinational corporations to plunder “Third World” countries makes it easier for workers and unions in the West to stand up to these companies and resist their incessant drive to lower workers’ real wages. Moreover, the fact that the world’s most populous country continues to cling onto a socialistic path can only give the toiling classes in the capitalist world hope that it is indeed possible to advance toward socialism – that is, advance towards a system that will finally liberate the masses from surging rents and grocery prices, ever greater exploitation of labour by capitalist business owners, insecure forms of work, racist discrimination of First Peoples and ethnic minorities, oppression of women and imperialist war. That is why we in Trotskyist Platform completely oppose the U.S., NATO and Australian military escalation against China. We say: U.S., Australian and British warships, get out of the South China Sea! U.S. troops out of Darwin! Down with ANZUS! Down with AUKUS! Not one submarine of any type, not one missile, not one warplane, not one person for Australia’s capitalist-serving military! Australian capitalist rulers: stop your neo-colonial bullying of Pacific countries that choose to establish cooperation with the PRC!
It is not enough to oppose the direct military threats to the PRC. The Australian ruling class’ military pressure against the PRC is part of an all-sided anti-communist Cold War. This includes a relentless anti-PRC propaganda campaign, support for Chinese anti-communist groups seeking the destruction of socialistic rule and McCarthyist intimidation of Chinese international students and migrants (and even some mainstream politicians like NSW upper house Labor MP, Shaoquett Moselmane) who dare to express even the slightest sympathy for the PRC. Unfortunately, most of the other left-wing groups in Australia, such as the Solidarity group, while stating opposition to the military buildup against China, actually join in the lying attacks on China over “human rights” and actively support the very same anti-communist forces within China that are backed by Australia’s capitalist rulers and their media. In doing so the likes of Solidarity are reinforcing the propaganda used by Australia’s exploiting class to “justify” their military build-up against socialistic China. In 2019, Solidarity as well as Socialist Alternative and Socialist Alliance – and to a slightly lesser extent the Socialist Equality Party – rubbed soldiers with right-wing, rabid anticommunists, both of local origin and those from Hong Kong, China and Vietnam (and even some Australian white supremacist activists), in participating in a series of anti-PRC demonstrations in support of violent anti-communist riots in Hong Kong. In supporting this movement, these groups poisoned the image of the PRC in the eyes of those that they influence, which is progressive layers of society – that is precisely the section of the community that could most easily be won to opposing the Cold War drive against Red China. In doing so, these wavering socialist groups have made it much harder to build opposition to the military escalation against China and to AUKUS, which they today proclaim their intention to campaign against. At the very least they are supporting the capitalist powers’ drive to crush socialistic rule in China by non-military means – that is via Western-backed anti-communist forces within China. Let’s remember, in the final instance, socialistic rule in the former USSR was not destroyed by military attack but by internal capitalist restorationist forces backed by Western imperialism. Infuriatingly, the very same left groups that in the previous Cold War backed these counterrevolutionary forces that destroyed the gains of Russia’s 1917 socialist revolution – under their previous names Solidarity, Socialist Alternative (these two groups were the components that came from the then ISO) and Socialist Alliance (then called the DSP) supported the Washington-backed pro-capitalist movement led by Boris Yeltsin that seized power in Moscow in August 1991 – are today supporting the modern-day Chinese equivalents of these capitalist counterrevolutionary forces!
In contrast to those leftists who are being swept away with the tide of Cold War propaganda, Trotskyist Platform has been energetically campaigning – including by holding street protests – against the entire military, political and propaganda drive of the U.S. and Australian capitalist rulers against the Chinese workers state. We call on authentic leftists to join with us in saying: Down with the lying accusations that China is “violating” the human rights of Uyghurs and Tibetans! Oppose the pro-colonial, rich people’s anti-PRC movement in Hong Kong! No support to capitalist Taiwan – reunify China through spreading China’s 1949 socialist revolution to Taiwan! Down with the Greens, Liberals and ALP’s McCarthyist campaign to shutdown the PRC-linked Confucius Institute Chinese language schools!
China’s Jiangsu Xiangshui offshore wind farm built by her state-owned power giant, Three Gorges. China’s socialistic state-owned firms, in which the profit motive comes second to serving people’s needs, have spearheaded China’s transition towards renewable energy. China’s public sector enterprises along with working class state power are the bedrock of her socialistic system. However, a sizable capitalist sector remains there deforming and threatening socialist rule. Imperialist pressure against China is in part aimed at boosting those upper-middle class elements within Chinese society and more rightist groupings within the ruling Communist Party of China who argue that, given that most of the world’s powers remain capitalist, China should adapt to this reality by giving ever more “rights” to her capitalistic private sector. That is why those committed to the fight for socialism must not only oppose the imperialist military build-up against China and the imperialist-backed, anticommunist groups within China attacking the workers state but must resist the Chinese capitalists and those advocating for them who seek to expand the “rights” and strength of China’s private sector at the expense of her state sector. We say: Curb the influence of the private sector! Advance China’s socialistic state sector! Photo credit: Three Gorges
Reformist Socialists in the Camp of Imperialism
The same wavering Australian socialist groups that have capitulated to the imperialist political war against the Chinese workers state have also enlisted in the imperialist campaign to bring “untamed” Russia to heel. Thus, all these groups have joined the likes of Anthony Albanese, Joe Biden and Boris Johnston in condemning Russia’s intervention into Ukraine and proclaiming full support for Ukraine’s war effort. It has been striking too how left-wing groups that rightly state opposition to the white supremacist far-right in Australia ape the Western media in whitewashing the level of fascist influence within the Ukrainian state forces.
Today, even as the Western capitalist rulers greatly step up their intervention into the war against Russia, the soft-on-imperialism majority of the Left have doubled down on their support to the anti-Russia war. At the Sydney May 15 Nakba Day rally in solidarity with the Palestinian people, Socialist Alternative speakers deceptively equated the Western imperialism-propped up Ukrainian war effort, that is partly aimed at crushing the aspirations for self-determination of the Donbass region’s Russian speaking population, with the Palestinian people’s completely just struggle for self-determination against an Israeli regime that is backed by the very same imperialist powers that are behind Ukraine’s war campaign. In similar vein, the June 14 issue of the Socialist Alliance’s newspaper Green Left Weekly likened Russia’s war in Ukraine with the war waged by the U.S. and its allies in Vietnam in the 1960s and 70s. But the truth is that the direct force opposing Russia today, the fanatically anti-communist Ukrainian regime that is acting as a proxy for Western imperialism, is as diametrically opposed as one can get from the Vietnamese communists that heroically defeated these very same imperialists and their local proxies in the Vietnam War.
A more valid analogy for this war would be the October 1973 Yom Kippur War. Then, Syria and Egypt, supported by Iraq and other Arab states, attacked Israel. The aim of the invading Arab armies was to recover territories seized by Israel in the 1967 Israel-Arab War. However, the Syrian and Egyptian attack was also partly unleashed with the nominal aim of liberating the Palestinian people of Gaza and the West Bank from hellish Israeli occupation – just as Russia justifies its intervention today in good part on liberating the Russian-speaking people of the Donbass. Just like Ukraine today, Israel’s war effort was greatly backed by U.S. imperialism for whom Israel was a proxy to pressure the Arab states then aligned with the socialistic USSR. However, there are also differences between the 1973 Israel-Arab war and this Ukraine-Russia war. For one, the present military balance between Russia and imperialist-backed Ukraine, at least currently, favours Russia much, much more than the then match-up between the Arab states on the one side and the Israeli war machine massively built up by U.S. imperialism on the other. On the other hand, in the 1973 war the European powers did not line up behind Washington anywhere as near to the extent as they have today over the current war. However, the biggest difference between the October 1973 War and today’s conflict is the attitude of the U.S. capitalist rulers. Although they enormously and decisively backed Israel in the Yom Kippur War, Washington also sought to moderate some of Israel’s most extreme militarist agendas as they were not then keen on having the crisis spiral into a nuclear world war between themselves and a Soviet Union that was strongly backing the Arab states. Thus, the U.S. quietly nudged their Israeli allies towards negotiations and a ceasefire. In contrast, today, the U.S. ruling class and possibly even more so the British one, keeps on fanatically egging on – and even pressuring – Ukrainian president Zelenskyy to reject peace negotiations with Russia. Yet despite this extreme and ever more aggressive intervention into this current conflict by the U.S.-led imperialist powers, many nominally socialist groups in Australia, the U.S. and Europe are on their side in this war.
The capitulatory socialist groups lined up behind their “own” capitalist rulers in this war are not only taking a terribly wrong, pro-imperialist position on this conflict. By supporting the side taken by the Australian rulers in this war, these groups are implicitly sending a message to the masses that the capitalist exploiting class that runs Australia can sometimes take the right side on major events and is, therefore, not always reactionary. This can only have the effect of dulling the masses’ opposition to their own capitalist exploiters. Yet if the working class masses are to be able to effectively defend themselves from the capitalist exploiters and eventually overthrow this ruling class through socialist revolution, they need to be animated by the most uncompromising and fervent opposition to this exploiting class. By diluting such opposition through aping the anti-Russia stance taken by this exploiting class, the soft-on-imperialism socialist groups are weakening the masses’ revolutionary sentiments. In doing so they are undermining the very struggle for socialism that they nominally stand for.
The Ukraine-Russia War and the Marxist Method of Analysis
It is not unusual for a conflict to change its character and for Marxists to have to adjust our line to the new circumstances. For example, when mass anti-government demonstrations erupted in Syria in the early part of 2011 following Arab Spring upheavals in Tunisia and Egypt, we did not then side with either the opposition forces or with Syria’s capitalist Assad government. To be sure, we were concerned that forces backed by the imperialist powers were intervening into the protests. However, initially, such forces did not have a decisive grip on the opposition movement. We therefore called for building a united-front opposition movement that was pro-working class, pro-women’s rights and anti-imperialist. The latter meant that the movement that needed to be built then in Syria needed to reject any alliance with any opposition forces that were themselves pro-imperialist or who were willing to ally with groups backed by the Western capitalist powers. Moreover, we insisted that any pro-imperialist, anti-government groups needed to not only be shunned but be stridently opposed. However, over a period of several months and as the tensions in Syria erupted into armed conflict, the groups that emerged as the dominant forces in the armed opposition became thoroughly subordinated to the ruling classes of the U.S., France and Britain. Thus by the first half of 2012, it was clear that the conflict in Syria had evolved into a war between proxies of imperialism and ex-colonial Syria. Therefore, Trotskyist Platform adjusted our line to one of defence of Syria against the “Rebel” and religious fundamentalist proxies of imperialism (we were the first Australian left group to take this position and actually the only Australian socialist group that firmly maintained such a stance).
We are able to make such adjustments to new realities because we are guided by the Marxist dialectical method. This method is based on the premise that political and economic entities are not fixed but are in constant change and must be analysed not only in their current state but in their direction of motion. Moreover, entities may be shaped by trends and forces pushing in opposite directions often with one of the trends more dominant than the other. It is therefore crucial to determine which is the dominant trend and which is the less decisive one. At certain times, piecemeal quantitative changes can build up to a qualitative change – like how the quantitative ramping up of the level of imperialist backing for Ukraine since February had by last month amounted to a qualitative change in the relationship between the imperialist powers and this war. What had started off as, overall, a squalid inter-capitalist conflict, albeit with imperialism strongly backing the Ukraine side, has turned into a proxy war of imperialist powers against not fully imperialist Russia.
The character of this war is not the only thing that has changed in the last few months. So has the relationship between Ukraine and its imperialist backers. For a long time, the Ukrainian ruling class has been a highly dependent junior partner of the Western imperialists. However, until more recently, it would not have been totally correct to describe them as complete puppets. For example in 2017, that is three years after the Maidan, anti-Russia coup, Ukraine’s government chose to join the China-driven Belt and Road Initiative. This would not have pleased Washington at all, especially since none of its other closest allies – the Australian, British, Canadian, Japanese and Israeli regimes – have joined this main foreign policy program of Beijing. However, in the course of this conflict, the Ukrainian regime has become overwhelmingly subordinated to the U.S. and British imperialist rulers. Meanwhile, the German and French imperialists, who have long sought to strike out a more independent course from their U.S. allies/rivals, have over the last four months been bowing down ever more shamelessly before Washington’s agenda. Of course, Marxists understand that such shifts do not always head continuously in one direction. It is conceivable that the continuation of Russian battlefield victories could shatter the U.S.-dictated “consensus” within the Western imperialist bloc.
The Marxist worldview is based on the understanding that capitalism has long ago outlived its usefulness and that the liberation of the exploited as well as the well-being of humanity as a whole depends on the overthrow of capitalist ruling classes by the working class-led masses. Thus, we Marxist-Leninists construct our approach to wars from the point of view of which position will strengthen the working class on the one hand and weaken the capitalist exploiters on the other. The question of which side “started” a war or “attacked first” has almost no relevance. For, grounded on the central Marxist tenet that major world events are fundamentally caused by the clash of conflicting economic interests, we understand that wars, at bottom, do not arise because some leader or government “decides to start a war” – although that is, of course, the immediate trigger – but because the clash of competing, in most cases economic, interests reach such a level that they explode into a physical conflict. Or put another way: war is politics by other means and, as Lenin insisted, politics is concentrated economics.
An integral part of this Marxist analytical outlook is the understanding that capitalist ruling classes are not driven fundamentally by ideology but by the economic interests of their class, which in turn spawns their ideology. So this war is, at bottom, not the result of Biden being a warmonger who believes in U.S. domination of the world or Putin being an authoritarian who dreams of a new Tsarist Russian empire or Zelenskyy being a weak person unwilling to defy the fascist forces within the Ukrainian state. All these things are, of course, in themselves, true and do matter. However, they are mostly only the ideological manifestations of profound economic and social interests and conflicts within U.S, Russian, Ukrainian and indeed global societies. The fundamental cause of the conflict between the U.S. and its allies on the one hand and Russia on the other are that with the decay and contradictions in the economies of the G7 capitalist “great powers” – exacerbated further during the COVID crisis – the former are unable to allow a new potential imperialist competitor to arise or to even tolerate a non-imperialist power that is not subordinated to themselves. Moreover, given the stunning rise of a socialistic giant in China, a phenomenon that endangers both the imperialists’ neocolonial plunder of their ex-colonies and ultimately their rule of exploitation at home, the imperialists cannot accept the existence of another capitalist power that does not enlist in the anti-communist crusade against Red China. The fact that these economic – and resulting political – imperatives of the nuclear-armed Western imperialists are driving them recklessly into an ever more aggressive proxy war against a nuclear-armed adversary, in Russia, proves just how irrational and deadly dangerous this capitalist system has become. The scary thing about all this is that when the imperialists face a still deeper economic crunch at home they will be driven to become even more belligerent and threatening on the global stage; and from the Great Depression to the late noughties Great Recession we know that the capitalist system inevitably produces severe economic crises.
No Illusions in Russia’s Capitalist Ruling Class!
A Marxist worldview teaches one not to view current events from an impressionistic, short-term perspective. That means while noting that Moscow is right now defying Western imperialism we should have no illusions that Russia’s capitalist rulers have any progressive essence. Russia’s rulers today stand up to a proxy war from the imperialists not because they have any commitment whatsoever to opposing imperialism. Rather, with their own economy riddled with similar contradictions to their adversaries, Russia’s capitalists cannot continue to be shoved out of markets in their own region nor can they afford to again be subordinated as they were in the first decade and a half after the destruction of the Soviet Union. It so happens that these capitalist interests have, at this moment, put the Russian ruling class into a clash with the imperialist plunderers of the world, a conflict in which the interests of the toilers of the world lie with the defeat of the imperialist side and, therefore, with the victory of the Russian side. However, in the long-term, Russia’s present rulers are no force for the liberation of the world from imperialism and capitalism. Rather, as a capitalist class, they are ultimately enemies of the working class of Russia and the world. Indeed, we communists have a specially enmity for Russia’s capitalist class. For they came to power through destroying the world’s first – and then most powerful – workers state, the Soviet Union. The current top administrator of Russian capitalism, Putin, himself played a direct role in supporting that Western-orchestrated counterrevolution. During the decisive events in 1991-92, Putin was a key aid to leading Russian counterrevolutionary politician, Anatoly Sobchak. That Putin’s lengthy address to the nation made three days before Russia’s attack on Ukraine was, in its first one-third, wholly a tirade against communism, the Soviet Union, the Bolsheviks and especially its leader Lenin, where Putin even stated his support for Ukraine’s de-communisation policy (where Ukraine fanatically purges Soviet era officials from its bureaucracy and bans communist symbols and slogans), should not come as a surprise. Like their Ukrainian enemies, Russia’s capitalist rulers run an order that is thoroughly corrupt and dominated by powerful oligarchs. Alongside Brazil, the U.S. and India, capitalist Russia has one of the highest wealth disparities of any country in the world.
To be sure it is notable that while U.S. rulers arrogantly speak about the U.S. right to police what they deviously call the “liberal, rules-based, world order” – in truth U.S.-led Western tyranny over the world – Putin and Co. speak about the need for a multi-polar, inclusive world. Yet this does not reflect any inherent ideological, let alone cultural, difference between what Moscow calls the “Anglo Saxon powers” and Russia’s own capitalist rulers. Rather, the sermonising, American-exceptionalist rhetoric of Washington is the ideology that best serves the interests of the U.S. capitalist class because it “justifies” the exploits of a predatory class powerful enough to dominate the world; whereas Moscow’s emphasis on the need for a multi-polar world conforms to the interests of an up and coming capitalist power seeking an expansion in the number of players allowed into the imperialist big league so that it can secure its own admission into this “great powers” league.
Moreover, it is not inconceivable that Moscow will in the future end up joining an alliance with one or more of the imperial powers that is currently arrayed against her. Particularly if Russia is strengthened through winning this war, European imperialist powers like Germany and France may quietly seek to move over, to a greater or lesser degree, towards an alliance with Russia. They would do so in order to both leverage Russia’s military power to pry open for themselves some space for greater independence from their U.S. allies-cum-rivals and, also, so that they can more aggressively target socialistic China. Alternatively, the dominant sections of the U.S. capitalists may resign themselves to Russia’s strength and seek to make her a capitalist ally in order to both pressure Washington’s European partners-cum-competitors and in order to isolate and further besiege socialistic China. That was, after all, what former U.S. president Donald Trump intended to do when he first came to office.
If either of these above programs were to gain traction or, alternatively, if both Washington and the EU powers sought to unite with Russia in a grand-capitalist alliance against socialistic China, Moscow would demand as a price for its admission assurances that it would be granted an unofficial license to assert its power in its region. Moscow would want guarantees that it would no longer be obstructed from pursuing its ambitions towards becoming a modern-day version of the Tsarist empire in which Russia would be the power dominating nominally independent states in the territories of the former USSR. Indeed, if Russia’s capitalist rulers were able to link themselves with the capital of richer capitalist powers – say Germany and/or France and/or the U.S. – they would be able to obtain a slice of imperialist looting through extracting a commission from these wealthier capitalists for acting as the military and bureaucratic enforcers of their investments in the Caucuses and Central Asian regions.
Trump’s plans for a Washington-Moscow alliance were never realised because they were opposed by the dominant sections of the American capitalist class. They were not willing to allow Russia to remain as any sort of power independent of the Washington-led Western bloc let alone share the profits of imperialist plunder with a new player. However, an expansion of Russian power should Moscow secure a military victory in this current war could force one or another of the Western imperialists to rethink their attitude. This is particularly the case since, even now, containing Russia runs a distant second to the main geo-strategic goal of all the imperial powers: crushing socialistic rule in China.
Of course, the above variants are less likely than the one where tensions between the Western imperialists and Russia continue to dangerously escalate. This is because there are political obstacles to an alliance being established between Russia and any of the Western powers. For one, while the capitalist bigwigs on either side are completely cynical and would have no shame in abandoning their previous claims about each other if that was what they determined to be in their own interests, it is different with the journalists, politicians, academics, lawyers, think tank staffers and “NGOs” that act as their advocates. This upper-middle class layer actually convinces themselves, or rather half convinces themselves, of the “correctness” and “morality” of the deceitful propaganda that they feed the masses. That means that the capitalist upper class will have some trouble convincing this middle-class layer, so crucial to protecting their interests, to radically change their position. For example, some of the journalists in the West would screech that it is outrageous for a “liberal-democratic” Western country to join an alliance with an “authoritarian” Russia that “violates human rights.” However, given how financially and spiritually dependent this privileged middle class layer is on the big-time capitalists, they will eventually come around, albeit with plenty of whining and tantrums, if their capitalist masters decisively believe that a change in geo-political strategy is needed.
A bigger obstacle to the emergence of any Western-Russia inter-capitalist alliance is that the Russian masses have a very understandable hatred of Western imperialism. Putin and Co. would have a hard time getting the Russian masses to accept Moscow’s entry into an alliance with a Western power. This is especially so given that being disliked for the inequality and economic hardships that they have presided over, the main source of legitimacy for the likes of Putin is that they are seen to be saving Russia from a return to her humiliated status of the post-Soviet nineties and early noughties. Moreover, in any Western country seeking a bloc with Russia, the capitalist rulers – and even more so their middle-class propagandists – would be very worried about losing all credibility with their own populations if they suddenly tell the population that an alliance with Moscow is now needed after having yesterday so rabidly demonised Russia. But here the “beauty” of parliamentary democracy as a form of rule serving the capitalists can come into play. Such “democracy” of course does not allow the working class majority of a country to share power and was never meant to. However, such “democracies” are very effective for managing differences in strategy amongst different factions of the capitalist class. Should a majority of the capitalist class think that a change in strategy on a major issue is needed they would not risk discrediting their entire system by having existing political leaders make fools of themselves by suddenly implementing policies that they had only yesterday been fervently condemning. Rather, the bulk of the capitalists would throw their support behind the propaganda and electoral campaigns of another pro-capitalist political faction less tainted with the previous policy.
Indeed, although in Australia all the pro-capitalist factions are unanimously behind Washington’s current hardline anti-Russia stance, even today there are capitalist opposition factions in both European countries and the U.S. that favour closer ties with Russia. When Biden’s $US40 billion military and economic aid package to Ukraine was voted on in the U.S. senate, a quarter of the senators from the opposition Republican Party voted against the bill. It so happens that these soft on Russia senators are from the despicably white supremacist, far-right of the Republican Party. That it is often the far-right factions of the capitalist class in both the U.S. and Europe that favour closer ties with Russia requires analysis here. One reason for this phenomenon is that these forces are so fanatically anti-communist that they are more willing to make concessions to a fellow capitalist power like Russia if that helps to isolate and counter socialistic China. However, this is not the entire story. After all, the liberal and mainstream conservative wings of the capitalist class are also intransigently opposed to the Chinese workers state. To understand further this phenomenon of the Western Far Right often being pro-Russia we need to look at the different realities faced by individual capitalists in the context of the overall decay of the capitalist order. Many capitalists in certain sectors are making huge profits and feel, moreover, that those profits are fairly stable and durable. However, other exploiters of labour feel that their position is more precarious and could be threatened by increased competition from overseas rivals, evolutions in the structure of the economy or threats to their business model posed by popular pressure to address climate change. Now the various different political factions of the capitalist class each draw support from both the capitalists that feel more secure and the ones that are insecure. However, in general, the capitalists that feel secure in their position are more likely to be “liberals” or mainstream conservatives since they are fairly content with the status quo domestically. Similarly, the middle class layers that this wing of the capitalist class rests on tend to be the more secure, often upper-middle class layers, like high-paid professionals. In contrast, the more insecure sections of the capitalist class tend to favour the Far Right, which also rests on support from the more precariously operating sections of the self-employed, business-owning middle class. Their insecurity breeds their reactionary extremism. They desire to exploit and crush the most downtrodden sections of the working class even further in order to protect their threatened positions. Significantly, the different social basis between the far-right factions of the capitalist class and their mainstream rivals affects how they see the current state of their countries. The Far Right, reflecting a base that is disproportionately among the more economically insecure layers of the capitalist exploiting class and the self-employed middle class, are far less effusive about the current reality. This is reflected in Trump’s signature slogan “Make America Great Again” which is based on the notion that America is not currently great. In contrast, the more secure sections of the capitalist class and middle class are more likely to see the current state of affairs far more positively, as reflected in their retort to Trump that “America is already great.” The latter estimation of America’s current state also affects the global outlook of the mainstream factions of the capitalist class. They feel that the U.S. is strong enough to reject any compromises with an up and coming power like Russia and is, moreover, in a position to simply push Russia back down into a subordinate position. In contrast, the extreme right of the Republican Party, with their far less optimistic estimate of America’s strength – reflecting the more precarious position of their own base – think that the U.S. must seek an accommodation with Russia.
Russia’s ruling class is well aware of the openness to an alliance with themselves on the part of far-right conservatives in both the U.S. and Europe. Therefore, while occasionally publishing a decent anti-imperialist op-ed piece from a progressive point of view, Russian state media outlets like RT often subtly promote Western Far Right parties. Moreover, they shamelessly court Western far right sentiment by publishing articles that echo the latter’s reactionary narratives. Thus, even as they denounce Nazi influence within the Ukrainian state, RT has in recent months featured op-ed pieces that disgustingly attacked the black rights movement in the U.S., apologised for the 6 January 2021 attempted far-right coup in Washington and attacked LGBT pride. A couple of weeks ago, RT even ran a piece from the Epoch Times (gloating at China’s lack of self sufficiency in iron ore), the newspaper of the fanatically anticommunist, ultra-right wing Chinese exile group, Falun Dafa.
Save Humanity from the Imperialist System through World Socialist Revolution
Although an alliance between capitalist Russia and one or more of the current imperialist powers is possible in the future, right now the imperialist powers are united in waging an uncompromising proxy war against Russia. The more intensely that the Western imperialists pursue this war – by throwing ever greater military and political resources behind their Ukrainian proxies – the more damaging to their interests would be a Russian military victory. That in turn drives the U.S. and its allies to further escalate their involvement in the conflict, which in turn makes them even less willing to accept any sort of Russian victory and so on. In this way, the nuclear-armed imperialists are spiraling towards a possible future direct clash with nuclear-armed Russia. We should all ponder the following question: if the imperialists are provocatively heading down a road that risks taking them towards a direct clash with a fellow capitalist power that is not even their main strategic enemy, what will they be prepared to do against their actual main target: socialistic China? It is increasingly clear that we need to sweep away the imperialist world order not only to ensure the well-being of humanity’s working class masses but to guarantee humanity’s very survival.
So how can we free the world from the stranglehold of the U.S.-led imperial powers? Here we must look to a solution that we can say is partly Russian. But this solution has nothing to do with Putin and his regime. Rather it is the example set by Lenin and Trotsky’s Bolshevik Party that led the working class of Russia – and behind them all of Russia’s toiling people and oppressed non-Russian national and ethnic minorities – in the overthrow of then Russian imperialism. This October 1917 Russian Revolution put an end to Russia’s participation in the World War I inter-imperialist slaughter and inspired revolutions throughout Europe that threatened to sweep away imperialist rule in Germany and beyond. The October Revolution was not only the world’s first successful socialist revolution but remains the only time that the toiling classes have toppled the ruling class of an imperialist country (subsequent great socialist revolutions in the likes of China, North Korea, Cuba, Vietnam and Laos overthrew capitalist rule in semi-colonial countries subjugated by imperialism). This revolution showed that it is the working class in the imperialist countries themselves – alongside we must add working-class-led, anti-imperialist resistance of the masses in the neocolonial countries as well as the inspiration provided by the existence of socialistic states where the working class already hold state power – that can and must topple the imperialist rulers from power. Therefore, to rid the world of dangerous imperialism we urgently need to advance towards modern-day versions of the October 1917 Russian Revolution in the U.S., Britain, Australia, Canada, Japan, New Zealand, Germany, France and the other imperialist countries.
The October Revolution established working class rule over one-sixth of the world’s surface and quickly granted equality and the right to self determination to all the nationalities that had been subjugated under the previous capitalist order – including to the Ukrainian people. However, the Soviet workers state immediately came under intense imperialist pressure. Under this pressure, in the mid-1920s, a bureaucratic layer took over political administration of the Soviet Union away from the revolutionary masses on a right-revisionist program of seeking accommodation with imperialism. By the late 1980s, after decades of further sustained imperialist military, economic and political pressure on the Soviet Union and its allies, the wavering bureaucracy began to buckle. By a few years later, they were completely surrendering state power, which they had been previously compelled to wield in the interests of the working class, to Western-orchestrated counterrevolutionaries. Up until this counterrevolution, the Soviet Union had remained a workers state based on a socialistic economic system. That meant that even after the Soviet Union’s bureaucratic backwards step in the mid-1920s, her system produced immense benefits for the masses. To be sure in the 1930s, the Soviet Union’s tremendous industrial development running at a rate hitherto unknown in humanity and while the capitalist world was submerged in the nightmare of the Great Depression was mixed with severe bureaucratic repression of the masses and serious backsliding on the national rights granted to the non-Russian minorities by the October Revolution. However, following the Soviet Union’s heroic victory over Nazi Germany in World War II and then a subsequent decade of rapid reconstruction after the war, the Soviet workers state was able to offer its people a rapidly rising standard of living, guaranteed employment and an array of opportunities to access entertainment facilities and participate in cultural, leisure and sporting pursuits. Moreover, in the three and half decades from this time onwards until her tragic descent towards capitalist counterrevolution in the late 1980s, there was a level of racial and ethnic harmony and equality in the multi-racial Soviet Union that was unknown in any multi-racial capitalist country. Given that the Soviet Union’s course towards socialism was as yet unfinished and given that she was saddled with the administration of a middle-class bureaucracy that kept the masses out of politics, there was neither perfect ethnic equality nor perfect ethnic harmony in the USSR. There was a degree of Russian-centredness within the state. Nevertheless, no national or ethnic group within the multinational Soviet Union could then be said to be subjugated. No ethnic or national group there in this period, including Ukrainian people, faced anywhere near the same racial or national oppression as, say, Aboriginal people suffer in Australia – or indeed Asian, African and Middle Eastern communities in this country today – or black people in the U.S., Tamils in Sri Lanka, West Papuans in Indonesia or Kashmiris, Sikhs and Muslims in India. It is telling that despite the Ukrainian lands of the Soviet Union being far less resource rich than the Russian lands, in 1989 not only was the per capita income in Soviet Ukraine on a par with that of Soviet Russia, the average life expectancy in Soviet Ukraine was two years higher than in Soviet Russia.
The dive towards capitalist counterrevolution in the former Soviet Union and then, especially, the counterrevolution itself led to a catastrophic plunge in the living standards of the masses in every part of the former Soviet Union. It also tore apart the ethnic harmony that once existed there. Decades of peace were now replaced by a series of wars in Georgia, Moldova, Chechnya, Armenia-Azerbaijan, southern Russia and then the Donbass region of Ukraine. International students from Africa, the Middle East, Asia and Latin America who in Soviet times spoke glowingly about how well they had been treated were now subjected to violent attacks from racist gangs. White supremacist forces dangerously grew in both Russia and Ukraine and in the latter gained a significant foothold in the state machinery in 2014. It is crucial to understand that all the conditions that led to this current war – the increased strength of NATO and its eastwards expansion, the drastic economic weakening of Ukraine that allowed the imperialist powers to subordinate her, the conditions of poor living standards and high unemployment out of which fascist forces were spawned, the existence of the rule of capitalist exploiters which necessitated the Ukrainian ruling class to scapegoat the Russian-speaking Donbass population and poison the Ukrainian masses with reactionary nationalism in order to ensure the masses’ subservience, the “Great Russian” chauvinism promoted by the Russian capitalist class in order to keep themselves in power and which in turn allowed Ukrainian nationalists to manipulate understandable fears of the Ukrainian people that they will once again be subjugated under Russians as in pre-Soviet times, the necessity for decaying capitalist ruling classes to expand markets by grabbing territory from each other – all these conditions were created as a result of capitalist counterrevolution in the former Soviet Union. In other words, the horrific suffering and loss of life in the Donbass war that began in 2014 and in its latest more intense phase that began with the Russian invasion this February are a result of the destruction of the workers state created by the October Revolution. This proves just how progressive the Soviet Union, with all its flaws, had been relative to capitalism and what a monumental step forward for humanity was the October 1917 Russian Revolution.
The lessons from all this that we must draw is that we need to fight to restore working class rule to all parts of the former Soviet Union, fight for socialist revolution around the world and fight like hell to ensure that the counterrevolution that destroyed the Soviet Union does not happen in socialistic China and the other remaining workers states. Moreover, to ensure that workers states created by new October Revolutions are not again collapsed – or even pushed a step backwards through bureaucratic degeneration – by hostile capitalist pressure, we need to complete any victory achieved by a workers revolution in a particular country by fighting urgently for other such revolutions throughout the globe – above all with the aim of destroying the tyranny of the imperial powers from within their own countries. Today, as the capitalist order grinds down the masses with plummeting real wages, ever-more insecure employment forms, skyrocketing rents and surging food, electricity and fuel prices, those committed to the fight for new October Revolutions can help build popular sympathy for such radical solutions in the course of advocating and mobilising class-struggle resistance to the attacks on the working class masses’ living standards.
To march towards socialist revolutions we must do everything possible to enhance the self-confidence and class struggle sentiments of the working classes and everything possible to weaken and discredit the imperialist ruling classes. Today that means standing for the defeat of the U.S., British, Australian and EU ruling classes’ proxy war against Russia. Let’s mobilise to demand: Stop the military aid to Ukraine! End all the sanctions against Russia! Let’s oppose NATO expansion and oppose NATO itself! We must also oppose all the imperialist schemes to leverage their current proxy war to further escalate their Cold War drive against socialistic China – Let’s unconditionally defend socialistic rule in China! And let’s build parties like Lenin’s Bolsheviks that will lead the working class masses to liberate all oppressed people and humanity itself from decaying capitalism and its final, most horrific stage – imperialism.
Photo Above: 15 May 2022, Ramallah, West Bank, Occupied Palestine: Thousands of Palestinians protest on Nakba (the Catastrophe) Day, the 74th anniversary of Israel’s murderous ethnic cleansing of three quarter of a million Palestinian people from their homes. Photo Credit: Ayman Nobani/Xinhua
DEFEND THE PALESTINIAN PEOPLE!
OPPOSE THE U.S. & AUSTRALIAN REGIMES BACKING ISRAEL’S TYRANNY!
RESIST THE WESTERN IMPERIALIST DOMINATION OF THE WORLD UNDERPINNING THE SUBJUGATION OF PALESTINIAN PEOPLE
12 May 2022: Yesterday, the Israeli military demolished several homes of Palestinian residents in the Masafer Yatta region south of the West Bank city of Hebron. This atrocity is part of Israel’s plan to evict some 1,000 residents from the area. If Israel is able to get away with this, it would be one of the biggest single expulsions of Palestinians since Israel seized the West Bank and Gaza in 1967. Palestinian families are being driven from homes and lands that they have lived, farmed and herded on for generations – going back long before Israel’s murderous ethnic cleansing of Palestinians was unleashed in the 1948 Nakba (Catastrophe). Simultaneously, Israel is accelerating the construction of Jewish-only settlements in the West Bank in order to further displace Palestinian people and undermine their just demands for statehood. Today, the regime announced that it would be building an additional 4,300 Jewish-only housing units in the West Bank.
The U.S. and Australian-backed Israeli regime is subjugating Palestinian people in an ever more brazen way. During the recent Muslim holy month of Ramadan, Israeli forces repeatedly carried out violent raids on the Al-Aqsa Mosque in occupied East Jerusalem, one of Islam’s holiest sites. They injured hundreds of Palestinian worshippers as they unleashed volleys of rubber bullets, tear gas cannisters and stun grenades. Israeli state forces are being encouraged to commit ever more cruel acts by increasingly active fascist groups amongst the Jewish “settlers” that have gone to colonise the West Bank. These fascist mobs have not only spearheaded the attacks on Al Aqsa and threateningly marched on Palestinian villages but have beaten and murdered Palestinian residents, torched their homes and cut down their food crops. Israeli forces have murdered over 50 Palestinian people in 2022 alone.
The working class and all oppressed of Australia and the world and all opponents of national oppression must stand with the persecuted Palestinian people. We must demand: Israel and its far-right “settlers” get out of all of the West Bank, Jerusalem and Gaza! For the right of return of Palestinian refugees to their pre-Nakba homes and lands! Let us support the Palestinian resistance against the murdering Israeli security forces and the fascist “settler” groups!
MOBILISE THE WORKERS MOVEMENT IN SUPPORT OF THE PALESTINIAN PEOPLE’S RESISTANCE
Israel is only able to subjugate Palestinian people because it receives massive military, economic and diplomatic backing from the U.S. imperialist superpower and the Americans’ closest allies, like Australia, and because of the complicity of the other Western imperialist powers likes Britain, Germany and Japan. That is why supporters of Palestinian rights in Australia must oppose the Australian rulers’ backing of Israel and must fight against the Australian ruling class’ support for the U.S. juggernaut that underpins Israel’s terror. Down with Canberra’s military cooperation and diplomatic backing of Israel! U.S. troops out of Darwin! Close the Pine Gap spy base and all the joint U.S.-Australia military bases in Australia! Down with the ANZUS Alliance! Down with AUKUS – Down with the new Cold War drive against socialistic China!
Although there are powerful pro-Israel lobbies in the U.S. and Australia, this is not the main reason why Washington and Canberra uphold Israel’s persecution of Palestinian people. The U.S. and Australian capitalist ruling classes uphold Israel’s tyranny because this is in their own class interests. The ultra-rich owners of the U.S. and Australia’s mines, banks, factories, agribusiness, transport operations and service sector firms not only exploit workers in their own countries but also exploit workers at an even more intense rate in the ex-colonial countries of the Middle East, Asia, the Pacific, Africa and Latin America where they also loot the natural resources and seize control of markets. To enforce this tyranny, these imperialist powers use not only their own militaries but also those of various “deputy sheriffs” who they back to enforce their interests in return for a share of the imperialist loot. Israel is the Middle East deputy sheriff of U.S. imperialism. Along with the Saudi regime, Israel was built up as the enforcer in the oil-rich Middle East of the imperialist powers’ drive against the USSR-led socialistic bloc during the Cold War. Today, Israel is both a strategically located ally of Western imperialism in their new Cold War drive against socialistic China and a henchman against local forces that dare not bow down enough to the Western imperialist tyrants, whether they be groups in Lebanon, Yemen and Iraq or “disobedient” countries like Syria and Iran. For playing this role, Israel’s powerful U.S. godfathers are happy to uphold its subjugation of Palestinian people and to turn a blind eye (or more cynically, give meaningless, gentle slaps on the wrist) to its most heinous atrocities. This is similar to how Washington covers up the Australian ruling class’ horrendous oppression of Aboriginal people and its brutal persecution of Middle Eastern, South Asian and African refugees in recognition of the crucial role that the Australian rulers play as America’s deputy sheriff in the South Pacific.
Given the interests that Australia’s imperialist ruling class has in propping up Israel’s tyrannical role in the Middle East, it is unsurprising that all the pro-capitalist parties in Australia, which includes all the parties currently in parliament, defend Israel. To be sure The Greens, unlike the right-wing Liberals or the ALP, do call out Israel’s worst atrocities. However, their position of “condemning violence on all sides”, which disgustingly equates the violence of the Israeli oppressors with the just resistance of a subjugated people, is far from genuine solidarity with the Palestinian struggle for self-determination. Moreover, while Greens politicians do attend pro-Palestinian rallies in Australia, one can be suspicious that this is mostly a vote gathering practice, given that nowhere in The Greens official foreign policy election platform – that is in what they present to everyone as opposed to what they promise to known Palestinian supporters – do they even mention support for the Palestinian national liberation struggle. Instead, while they call to “renegotiate” Australia’s alliance with the U.S., they nevertheless uphold this alliance, and thereby uphold a pact that strengthens the U.S. imperialist superpower that props up Israel.
Alongside the geostrategic interests that the U.S., Australian, Canadian and New Zealand ruling classes have in backing Israel, all these capitalist rulers feel a connection with Israel’s rulers because, like the latter, their own rule was also founded on the colonial dispossession and murderous subjugation of the peoples living on the lands that they now lord over. If one sees the way that Australian state forces brutalise Aboriginal adults and children in custody and then cover up these crimes – like how a racist white police officer killed an unarmed Aboriginal man Kumanjayi Walker by shooting him three times at close range yet was two months ago acquitted of murdering the Aboriginal teenager by the Northern Territory courts – it has many similarities to Israel’s heinous persecution of Palestinian people.
Given their ideological affinity with the Israeli ruling class and more significantly, the interests that they have in upholding Israel’s strength, it is impossible to make the capitalist rulers of the U.S. or Australia an ally of the Palestinian people. However, what we can do is to force these imperialists to back off their level of support for Israel. Such a perspective is, however, undermined to the extent that many supporters of Palestinian rights continue to believe that it is possible to win over Australia’s ruling class to the side of the Palestinians. For the latter notion falsely implies that what we need to do is to appeal to Australia’s capitalist rulers when what we must do is the very opposite: we need to punish the ruling class for their backing of Israel’s reign of terror. One cannot appeal to the conscience of Australia’s capitalist class as they are not driven by conscience but by the drive to expand profits and to shape the world order in such a way that their profits both at home and abroad are secured and maximised. Instead, we must threatenthe profits and political authority of Australia’s capitalist rulers to such an extent that the harm that they would thereby suffer outweighs the geostrategic benefits that they gain from upholding the Israeli, Middle East deputy sheriff of their American godfathers. The key force for achieving this perspective is the organised workers movement. Trade union political strikes here in protest at the Australian regime’s support for Israel would hurt the profits of Australia’s capitalist rulers and could, therefore, arm-twist them to dial back their support for Israel.
Union action against Israel’s tyranny is possible because not only is such struggle vitally needed it is also in the very interests of the workers movement. By striking economic and political blows against a key deputy sheriff of U.S. and allied imperialism, the workers movement would be landing punches against the U.S. and Australian imperialist ruling classes themselves. In other words they would be weakening the very same capitalist rulers who at home are driving down workers’ real wages, jacking up rents and prices, pushing ever more workers into precarious gig and casual jobs and who in their efforts to prevent the masses uniting to resist their ever greater exploitation of working class people are scapegoating Aboriginal First Peoples and people of Asian, Muslim, African, Middle Eastern and Islander backgrounds. Any damage done to the strength of the Australian ruling class by weakening its international position will necessarily aid the struggle against exploitation and racism at home.
A small number of the left-wing led unions have indeed shown some solidarity with the Palestinian cause by attending pro-Palestinian rallies in Australia. However, such acts are undercut by the fact that the workers movement in Australia is currently led by the Labor Party, a party that from its support for anti-strike laws, to its fulsome backing of the Cold War drive against socialistic China to its defence of Israel is determined to prove to Australia’s ruling class that it is as reliable a defender of the capitalist class’ key interests as the right-wing Liberal-National Coalition are. The struggle to mobilise the working class in support of the Palestinian people is thus closely bound up with the struggle to reorient the workers movement onto a new truly anti-capitalist agenda – an agenda that is needed to not only ensure working class support for oppressed peoples like Aboriginal people and the Palestinians but which is essential to the fight for the working-class’ own rights.
STANDING WITH THE PALESTINIAN PEOPLE MEANS OPPOSING WESTERN IMPERIALISM’S MASSIVE BACKING FOR ITS UKRAINIAN PROXY IN EUROPE’S LATEST WAR
An example of just how emboldened Israel is right now to crush the Palestinian people was seen yesterday when the Israeli military murdered American-Palestinian, Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh in a targeted assassination. Of course this is hardly Israel’s first murder of journalists and certainly not of Palestinian people more generally. However, Abu Akleh was not only a Palestinian journalist but a citizen of the United States, the main country that is propping up Israel. Moreover, unlike American student Rachel Corrie who was a leftist opponent of U.S. imperialism when she was murdered by the Israeli military in 2003 while courageously helping to protect Palestinian homes in the Gaza strip from demolition, Abu Akleh worked for a news organization that while covering Palestinian issues more fairly is overall a rabid promoter of U.S. imperialism – from its support for the Western imperialist agenda in the Syrian and Ukraine Wars to its retailing of anti-China, anti-communist propaganda.
Part of the reason why the Israeli regime thinks it can now get away with acting even more brazenly than in the past has to do with the context of the Ukraine-Russia War. In order to prevent Russia emerging as a potential capitalist competitor and to push her back down to the humiliated position that she had in the first decade after the destruction of the USSR, the U.S.-led Western imperialists are throwing huge amounts of arms, money and propaganda into supporting Ukraine in its war with Russia. The Western imperialists are so driven by this agenda that they are more than willing to abandon any minor disputes they may have had with any force that contributes to this anti-Russia campaign. For example, the Western mainstream media had in the past occasionally reported on the influence in the Ukrainian state of brutal fascist paramilitary groups like the white supremacist Azov Battalion. Even as the U.S. military trained the Azov forces, Washington was worried that too open support for such avowed neo-Nazis would constitute a bad look. However, today such misgivings have been totally abandoned. Western regimes and media openly hail the “resistance” of the Mariupol-based Azov regiment and completely whitewash both its ultra-racist, Nazi character and its torture and murder of pro-Russia civilians. Similarly, in the past, the likes of France and Germany had made mild criticisms of the extreme hostility to dark-skinned refugees, persecution of LGBTIQ+ people and authoritarian repression of dissent by the hard right government in Poland. The EU powers were worried that the openness of these repressive policies was undermining the EU’s claims to uphold “democracy.” However, today as the Polish government has put itself up as an extreme frontline opponent of Russia, these mild rebukes of her by her Western allies have softened into total silence. Israel is now also a crucial part of the anti-Russia campaign. Not only do the far-right infested Ukrainian and Israeli regimes enthusiastically support each other, Israel has also recently played a headline role in the propaganda campaign against Russia by accusing Russia of committing war crimes in Ukraine and by fanatically attacking Moscow’s basically correct point (albeit distracted by her foreign minister Lavarov’s false and hurtful claim – for which Putin later apologised – that Hitler had Jewish roots) that just because Ukrainian president Zelenskyy is Jewish does not change the fact that the neo-Nazis play a significant role in the Ukrainian regime. Aware of its importance to the anti-Russia campaign of its Western imperialist backers, Israel knows that its allies will tolerate it acting in an even more heinously cruel manner than usual. And the Palestinian people are the victims of this.
Unfortunately, the murdering Israeli regime’s calculation has thus far proven correct. It was striking how the U.S. State Department responded to the questions about the impartiality of the “investigation” into the murder of Abu Akleh announced by Israel. State Department spokesman Ned Price kept on insisting that Israel has the “wherewithal and the capabilities to conduct a thorough, comprehensive investigation” and rejected calls for an independent probe. In other words, the U.S. imperialists are willing to accept the whitewash of the murder of their own citizen by the Israeli regime even though she worked for a thoroughly pro-Western news organisation in Al Jazeera. Earlier, as anti-Russian propaganda ramped up in the tense days leading up to the Ukraine-Russia War, the Australian government further boosted its support for Israel by outrageously designating Hamas in its entirety to be a “terrorist” organisation (in contrast to the previous stance that only recognized the group’s military wing as such).
Some pro-Palestinian groups in Australia, like the Socialist Alternative group, claim that the West is not being consistent by supporting Ukraine against Russia while refusing to support the Palestinian cause. However, the truth is that the Palestinian people’s completely justified resistance against Israeli occupation has very little in common with Ukraine in its conflict with Russia. For one, a major trigger of the Russian intervention was Ukraine’s brutal persecution of Russian-speaking people living in the eastern Donbass region of Ukraine over the last eight years. The post-2014 Ukrainian regime threatened these peoples’ language and cultural rights. When the Russian-speaking people protested, they were brutally attacked by fascist Ukrainian paramilitary groups that have many similarities to the far-right settler groups in the West Bank. In the eight years prior to the current escalation of the conflict, Ukrainian state forces and their fascist paramilitaries killed around 10,000 of the Russian speaking people in the Donbass who were struggling for their self-determination. In that sense, it is more Ukraine rather than Russia that has been mirroring the oppressive terror of Israel. To be sure, in sending Russian forces into Ukraine, Moscow’s agenda is more than merely defending the persecuted Russian-speaking populations in the East and South of Ukraine and pre-emptively pushing back NATO’s threatening eastwards expansion to her borders. Moscow also seeks to quench the capitalist thirst for ever greater access to guaranteed markets by grabbing more territory and simultaneously advancing her quest to become a new imperial power. However, by violently resisting the wish of many Russian-speaking people in the south and east of Ukraine to either join Russia or have closer ties with her, the Ukrainian regime is also driven by the capitalist push to maximise their own country’s territories.
The Western imperialists say that Russia’s intervention into Ukraine is “threatening the rules-based international order.” But this order is a brutal, oppressive one where the U.S. ruling class and its allied counterparts in the likes of Britain, Australia and Germany set the “rules” which they then make everyone else follow … except themselves! This “rules-based” order has seen the U.S., British and Australian imperialists brutally invade and ravage Iraq twice, devastate Afghanistan during a cruel twenty year occupation, NATO destroy Libya through a bloody 2011 regime change invasion, the devastation of Syria in a Western proxy war, the killing of large numbers of Pakistani people in U.S. drone strikes, the brutal U.S./Australian colonial occupation of Somalia, the 1999 NATO terror bombing of Yugoslavia, the bloody Western-backed Saudi war on Yemen, etc, etc. Moreover, it is this Western imperialist-dominated “rules-based world order” that sustains Israel’s brutal oppression of Palestinian people.
The significance of the Ukraine-Russia conflict to the Western-dominated “world order” and therefore to the Palestinian cause has grown markedly over the last two and a half months. When the Russian troops first intervened, the Western powers, while supporting Ukraine, shied away from providing her with the heavy weapons needed to really take on Russia. However, drunk with their own war propaganda, the Western imperialists have now drastically increased their level of military support to Ukraine – including the provision of heavy weapons, direct training of Ukrainian soldiers and the actual presence of Western special forces’ advisers in Ukraine. Having now invested far more in this conflict than they previously had, the outcome of this war will in turn affect far more the U.S., Australian and other Western imperialists. Should their Ukrainian allies triumph it would embolden Western imperialism and thus intensify the subjugation of Palestinian people, increase the Cold War threats to socialistic China and North Korea, increase the dangers faced by “disobedient” countries like Iran, Venezuela and Syria and intensify Western imperialist exploitation of the developing countries. On the other hand, while a Russian military victory would encourage reactionary nationalism within Russia and boost the authority of Russia’s capitalist exploiting class, it would weaken the U.S., British, Australian, German, Japanese and other Western imperialists who have so avidly backed the other side. This would be a good thing for all those subjugated by Western imperialism and its proxies, including the Palestinian people. Therefore, while Russian anti-capitalists would have to oppose their own ruling class while explicitly opposing NATO and refusing to ally with pro-Western pacifists, opponents of imperialism and capitalism in the rest of the globe, especially in the Western imperialist countries themselves, must campaign for the defeat of the Western imperialist-backed side in this war and oppose the growing intervention of the U.S., Australian and other imperial ruling classes into the conflict. That is why we in Trotskyist Platform say: Let’s oppose all the economic sanctions on Russia! Let’s campaign to stop all Western military supplies to the Ukrainian military! Let’s undermine the Western-imperialist controlled “world order” that underpins Israel’s brutal subjugation of the Palestinian people!
Unfortunately, most of the rest of the Left in Australia have taken the opposite position. The Socialist Alternative, Solidarity and Socialist Alliance groups are all backing the U.S., Australian and Israeli-backed Ukraine side in this war. The Australian Communist Party (ACP) formally takes a position of opposing both sides in the conflict but by proudly stating that “the ACP condemns the attack by the forces of the Russian Federation on Ukraine” the ACP in practice gravitates towards supporting imperialist-backed Ukraine. Although the members of all these groups sincerely hold their support for the Palestinian cause, by backing the side of the Western imperialists in the Ukraine-Russia conflict they are supporting the forces that uphold Israel’s tyranny over Palestine. Most of these groups – in particular the Socialist Alternative, Solidarity and Socialist Alliance groups – similarly backed the side of Western imperialism during the Syrian war when they supported imperialism’s Syrian proxies against the Syrian government; and in doing so also put themselves in a de facto military bloc with the Israeli regime that launched hundreds of airstrikes against Syrian government positions.
We insist that true solidarity with the Palestinian people and all those suffering under the direct and indirect tyranny of Western imperialism means slashing back at the U.S., Australian, British, German, Japanese and other Western imperialist ruling classes in every single field where they extend their claws. That means that as well as opposing Western imperialist intervention into the Ukraine conflict and their support for Israel, we must stand for: All U.S. and allied forces out of Iraq, Syria and all the Middle East! Down with the imperialist threats to Iran! Down with all imperialism’s proxies in Syria! U.S. troops out of the Korean Peninsula! Australian imperialist rulers: Get your bullying hands off the Solomon Islands and the rest of the South Pacific! Down with the cruel imperialist-driven sanctions against North Korea, Iran, Venezuela and Afghanistan!
STANDING WITH PALESTINE MEANS STANDING WITH SOCIALISTIC CHINA!
The U.S., Australian and other imperial ruling classes see a far greater threat to their domination of the world than the one posed by their would-be Russian competitor. And that is the threat to imperialist domination of the world posed by the rise of China. Unlike Russia, which is today just another capitalist country, China is a workers state formed when the toiling classes grabbed state power in a giant anti-capitalist revolution in 1949 and which continues to have an economy centred on socialist, public ownership of key sectors. Of all the main powers in the world, including Russia, the Peoples Republic of China currently takes the strongest position in support of Palestine. However, China’s support remains far below what it should be. China’s compromising leaders take a narrow, national-centred approach to foreign policy where they seek to build socialism only in China while trying to ensure “peaceful coexistence” with the capitalist world by avoiding any aggressive involvement in any issues abroad that do not very directly affect China’s interests. This policy is a flawed response to the immense hostile pressure that China faces from the capitalist powers. China’s leaders hope that should they avoid threatening capitalist interests abroad, the capitalist powers will in turn avoid attacking China. However, this policy has been a failure. Whereas, China indeed does little to actively promote anti-capitalist struggle abroad, the imperialist powers are doing everything possible to strangle socialistic rule in China. However, should greater solidarity with Red China from working class people around the world arise, stauncher communists within China would get a greater hearing when they push for China to take a much stronger stance in opposing capitalism and imperialism abroad. This can only be a good thing for the Palestinian people.
Moreover, even though the current Beijing leadership does not seek to challenge Western imperialism’s domination over the world, the mere existence of China as a socialistic power is slowly undermining the grip of imperialism over the ex-colonial countries. China’s mutually beneficial cooperation with the Global South is allowing countries in the Pacific, Africa, Asia, the Middle East and Latin America to access capital, modern technology, training and a large market in China without having to subordinate their country to the imperial powers or their agencies like the IMF. This is what is driving Australia’s capitalist rulers mad as countries in the South Pacific like the Solomon Islands and Fiji slowly exert greater independence from their Australian imperialist overlords. Eventually, some Arab countries may even finally start exerting greater independence from Washington and its allies, which can only be a good thing for the Palestinian struggle.
Furthermore, the capitalist powers are terrified that even though Beijing does nothing to explicitly promote socialist revolution, the mere example presented by the most populous country in the world continuing to adhere to a socialistic course, while successfully lifting her people out of poverty and providing rapidly rising real wages, wide access to low-rent public housing and ever improving infrastructure, public transport and cultural opportunities for her masses, will encourage working class people in the capitalist world to themselves start agitating for socialism. That is why the Western ruling classes see the rise of socialistic China as an “existential threat.” Of course, if their worst fears are indeed confirmed and the working classes in the West, inspired by socialistic China’s successes, overturn capitalist rule in their own countries that could very quickly open the road to the liberation of Palestine.
More immediately, if solidarity from the masses around the world is able to protect socialistic China such that she is allowed to continue to rapidly rise, this will inevitably loosen the grip of the U.S., Australian and other Western imperialists over the world. That will in turn naturally weaken the Washington-propped up Israeli regime and bring more opportunities for the Palestine liberation cause as well as for the struggles of all people living under the tyranny of the imperial powers. Therefore, all consistent supporters of the Palestinian struggle, all opponents of imperialism and all supporters of working class interests must stand for the unconditional defence of the Chinese workers state against imperialist threats and internal pro-capitalist forces. Down with the lying propaganda war against Red China over Taiwan, Uyghurs, Tibet, Hong Kong, the COVID response and the Pacific! U.S./ British/Australian navies get out of the South China Sea! Oppose the Australian capitalist regime’s anti-China military build up: no to nuclear submarines, no to missiles! For the right of the Solomon Islands and any other country to engage in military and economic cooperation with Red China to the extent that they see fit!
ISRAEL = DEADLY OPPRESSION OF PALESTINIAN PEOPLE + NO FUTURE FOR JEWS EITHER
Recent weeks have confirmed that while Israel spells murderous subjugation for Palestinian people it cannot even deliver on the main promise that Zionist leaders use to sell Israel: that it will be a secure homeland for Jewish people. The building of an ethno-religious state through murderous ethnic cleansing of another people and through ongoing murderous terror against the dispossessed people inevitably provokes resistance and violent responses. Most of the Palestinian armed resistance takes the form of completely justified blows against the Israeli security forces and fascist settler groups. A small number of desperate Palestinians also lash out in pointless and harmful to their cause attacks on Israeli civilians. That is the byproduct of the brutal Israeli subjugation of Palestine. Although far more Palestinians have been killed by the Israeli security forces, 19 Israelis have also been killed in 2022 in occupation-connected violence including several police officers, a security guard, two Israeli troops killed in an accidental attack by a nervous fellow soldier and several civilians. Moreover, although massive backing from Washington allows Israelis to enjoy a higher standard of living than neighbouring peoples, life in an ethnic supremacist garrison state is not exactly great: youth are required to undergo long periods of forced military conscription and the reality of Israel’s brutal subjugation of Palestinian people means that Israelis are sometimes consigned to life in bomb shelters to protect themselves from counterattack. Yet Israel’s capitalist ruling class does not have the interests of the Jewish masses as their real concern… and never did! What they really want is a guaranteed market and a state compacted together by extreme nationalism that will allow them to exploit the labour of fellow Jewish, Hebrew-speaking people and to con such Jewish working-class people into feebly accepting this exploitation out of nationalist devotion to the ethno-religious state. Indeed, Israel’s most dramatic intervention into the Ukraine-Russia War has confirmed how little its rulers are truly devoted to the well-being of Jewish people. In slamming Moscow for pointing out that Ukrainian president Zelenskyy’s Jewish heritage does not prevent neo-Nazis from playing a significant role in the Ukrainian state, the Israeli regime covered up the large presence of neo-Nazi groups like the Azov and Aidar regiments in the Ukrainian paramilitary forces and inhabitation of virulently anti-Semitic, fascist individuals in parts of Ukraine’s military and police top brass; while whitewashing the reality that the Ukrainian state glorifies as national heroes two Nazi-collaborating, anti-Soviet, Ukrainian World War II paramilitary groups (Stepan Bandera’s UPA and OUN). During World War II, the UPA and OUN between them murdered tens of thousands of Jewish people and over 100,000 Polish people, while helping their Nazi allies to carry out the Holocaust.
It is crucial that a far-sighted section of the Jewish working class in Israel sees the futility and injustice of the Zionist project and comes over to the side of the subjugated Palestinian people. There are some brave Israelis who do protest the worst excesses of the regime’s anti-Palestinian terror but these individuals need to come over fully to opposing the Israeli state and to standing squarely in solidarity with the Palestinian people’s resistance. They must see that the implicitly ethnic supremacist ideology of Zionist nationalism serves to obscure the fact that Jewish working class people in Israel are being exploited by Jewish capitalists and that Israeli capitalism has left the masses with a poor welfare system, the single highest rate of poverty in the OECD and unaffordable rents and house prices (which the regime has cynically manipulated to encourage people to become West Bank settlers with the promise of cheap land in a strategy typical of all settler colonialist regimes). What is needed is for a slice of the Jewish working class to break from Zionist nationalism and unite with the Palestinian people in toppling the Israeli capitalist state. Such a socialist revolution would produce a binational workers state that would ensure equal rights for people of all ethnicities, would annihilate the fascist Settler forces and would guarantee the right to return of all Palestinian refugees.
Given the national chauvinism that currently infects much of the Israeli population, such a solution presently remains distant. By allowing them a relatively privileged economic position in comparison with neighbouring Arab peoples, massive imperialist aid to Israel has tied much of its masses to the illusions and prejudices of Zionism. But any weakening of Western imperialism and its domination over the world would cut the ground from under the feet of Israel’s capitalist rulers and necessarily stir upheavals amongst the Israeli masses. So let us relentlessly resist the Western imperialist domination of the world that underpins Israel’s subjugation of the Palestinian people! Down with all Western imperialist military aid and sanctions over the Ukraine-Russia War! Stand with socialistic China against imperialist threats and anti-communist forces! Oppose the ANZUS and AUKUS alliances that strengthen the imperialist powers that back Israel’s tyranny! For workers’ industrial action to oppose U.S. and Australian backing for Israel! Let’s resist the U.S. and Australian regimes that support Israel’s terror! Let us make the nest of Zionist expansionism fall by vigorously shaking the imperialist branches on which it is perched and which give it support!
Photo Above: Family members view the wreckage of a car destroyed in a U.S. drone strike on a residential neighbourhood of Kabul on 29 August 2021. The U.S. attack killed ten civilians including an employee of a U.S.-based aid organisation as well as seven children – the youngest being two, two year-old girls. The U.S., British, Australian, French and German imperialists killed tens of thousands of Afghan civilians during their invasion and occupation of Afghanistan. Russia’s and Ukraine’s ruling classes are certainly oppressive capitalist exploiting classes. But it is the U.S., British, Australian and other Western ruling classes that are the world’s biggest bullies and the ones that are subjugating most of the world’s people. Photo credit: Wakil Koshar – AFP
Bougainville, Iraq, Somalia, Serbia, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Pakistan, Yemen, Palestine: Victims of U.S., Australian, NATO and Allied War Machines
The Main Threat to the World’s People and the Main Enemy of the Australian Working Class isNot Putin’s Ambitious Capitalist Regime But the U.S., Australian and Other Western Imperialists
OPPOSE WESTERN IMPERIALISM’S PROVOCATIVE AND HYPOCRITICAL INTERFERENCE IN UKRAINE AND OPPOSE SANCTIONS AGAINST RUSSIA! NO TO NATO EXPANSION! NO U.S./AUSTRALIAN ARMS TO UKRAINE!
FOR UNITY OF THE RUSSIAN AND UKRAINIAN WORKING CLASSES AGAINST BOTH THEIR CAPITALIST RULERS!
Stop Morrison and Albanese from Escalating Their War Drive against Socialistic China!
9 March 2022: Thirteen days ago, Russian troops began an operation with the stated aim of supporting Russian-speaking rebels in the Donbass region of Eastern Ukraine. The rebels have waged an uprising in the districts of Donetsk and Luhansk ever since right-wing nationalists in Ukraine seized power in a 2014 coup and unleashed language discrimination and ethnic terror against the Russian-speaking peoples of the Donetsk and Luhansk districts (known collectively as the Donbass). The rebels have increasingly called for independence for these districts from their Ukrainian oppressors. On 21 February, Russian president Vladimir Putin announced that Russia was recognising the independence of Donetsk and Luhansk. Now he is enforcing that with military intervention and extending Russian forces into whole swathes of Ukrainian territory.
It is not yet known what the Russian administration’s final goal is. However, what is clear is that part of Putin’s agenda is to prevent Ukraine from becoming a staging post for NATO troops and nuclear missiles aimed against Russia. Ukraine had been working toward joining NATO. Russia’s use of military might in a way that has impinged on the sovereignty of one of NATO’s allies and trampled on the interests of Western imperial powers has horrified Western leaders. They are, after all, so used to being the ones that use violence to bully others into submission! Now they are getting a taste of what they have been dishing out to hundreds of millions of people over the years. Indeed, certain reports coming out of Ukraine, like the one that Russia’s incursion had caused the embassy staff representing the Canadian imperialist regime to flee the country in tears, would have triggered celebration among anti-imperialists around the world. Many know all too well how the Canadian imperialists, their senior partners in the U.S. and their other imperialist allies – like the Australian regime – have been brutally riding roughshod over large numbers of the world’s people with almost complete impunity. It is nice to see their interests now being harshly violated! However, there is another side to Russia’s intervention. Although in part a pre-emptive defense measure against NATO, Russia’s capitalist rulers also seek to advance their project to establish a capitalist sphere of influence over the territories of the former USSR. Moreover, in both the actions of Russia which is pushing further into Ukraine than just the majority ethnic-Russian areas and those of Ukraine, which refuses to recognise the right to self-determination of majority Russian areas in the Donbass, the innate capitalist drive to maximise the size of secure markets by maximising territory is all too evident. The imperialist-backed, Ukrainian capitalist regime that brutally persecutes the ethnic Russian people in the Donbass and the ambitious Russian capitalist regime are fighting a reactionary war on both sides. A war that is causing much suffering and death.
Russia’s actions have been denounced by the U.S. rulers and their European NATO and Australian allies. These Western regimes have imposed stiff new sanctions on Russia. The Australian imperialists are eagerly part of these moves. The right-wing Liberal government and the Labor opposition have been tripping over each other to be the first to advocate ever more provocative actions against Russia. Meanwhile, Western capitalist leaders have reiterated their “right” to provocatively extend NATO to Ukraine to further encircle Russia. They are also sending even more military hardware to their Ukrainian allies. This includes Javelin hand-held anti-tank missiles and Stinger hand-held anti-aircraft missiles. Three days ago, Australian prime minister, Scott Morrison boasted that, “Our missiles are on the ground now [in Ukraine].” In other words, the U.S., European and Australian imperialists are pouring even faster into the cauldron the very same fuel that ignited the conflict in the first place.
In lockstep with his senior partners in Washington, Morrison ranted that Russia’s rulers are “thugs and bullies.” Ever eager to prove his loyalty to the U.S.-Australia alliance that Australia’s capitalist bigwigs insist on, ALP leader Anthony Albanese joined in too, denouncing Russia as the “aggressor.” So did the Greens. The following day, Morrison condemned Russia for an “unprovoked and “brutal invasion”. Hang on! Is it not the U.S. and Australian regimes that conducted a completely unprovoked and heinously brutal invasion of Iraq in 2003 in the course of which they killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians? Interviews by Australian regime-controlled media, like the ABC, with understandably worried residents in Kiev only highlights that these media never broadcast such interviews from Iraqi cities when the U.S./Australian/British imperialist forces were terror bombing the people of that country during their 2003 invasion; or during their earlier 1991 assault on Iraq.
Alongside their first 1991 attack on Iraq the, now known as, AUKUS powers spearheaded the enactment of severe United Nations economic sanctions on the people of Iraq. Those sanctions would end up causing the premature deaths of over 1.7 million Iraqi children from a lack of medicine and adequate nutrition! Yet it is hardly only in Iraq that the Western capitalist regimes have acted as “thugs and bullies.” In 1989, Canberra directed and armed PNG to carry out a brutal war against rebels on the island of Bougainville who had risen up against the arrogant destruction of their land by Australian-owned mining giant CRA (now part of Rio Tinto). Australia sent “ex-”SAS mercenaries to fly helicopter gunships. These Australian pilots unleashed some of most hideous massacres of Bougainville civilians. Canberra then helped impose a murderous blockade of the island to starve the people into submission. All up some 15,000 to 20,000 people in Bougainville were killed as a result of the thuggery of Australian imperialism.
Then in 1999, Australian regime forces led a military occupation of East Timor – supposedly to protect people from pro-Indonesian forces that had been staging brutal attacks. But Canberra’s real aim was to establish a political order in East Timor that would allow Australian companies to exploit Timorese labour and loot its rich gas resources. When the East Timorese government nevertheless resisted Australian demands to hand over its oil and gas wealth, the Australian regime planted covert listening devices in the Timorese prime minister’s office so that they could gain the advantage in negotiations over the division of Timor’s seabed gas resources. Then as the East Timorese government continued to not be subservient enough, Canberra again sent in “peacekeepers” in 2006 to manipulate events so that the then government would be overthrown in a coup and replaced by one more compliant to Australia’s capitalists. If that is not “bullying”, we don’t know what is!
Earlier in 1993, again under the guise of “peacekeeping,” the U.S. and Australia sent troops to Somalia to exert their influence over the strategic horn of Africa region. In doing so they unleashed brutal and often racist terror against the local people. It is only the brave resistance of the Somali people, who managed to bring down several U.S. helicopter gunships that finally saw an end to the occupation. Then in 1999, NATO unleashed a 78 day bombing campaign against Serbia, killing thousands of civilians as their bombs and missiles struck apartments, civilian buses, factories, refugee convoys, a packed civilian passenger train and most notoriously the Chinese embassy in Belgrade. Two years later, the U.S., backed by Australia, New Zealand, Britain, Germany, Canada and France and other NATO countries, invaded Afghanistan. They callously killed 30,000 Afghan civilians – mostly through “accidental” air strikes on wedding parties, hospitals and homes. The Australian regime’s SAS special forces committed many of the worst war crimes. They murdered unarmed Afghan peasants, tortured and executed prisoners and slit the throats of young boys. One of their worst atrocities was their 15 December 2012 massacre of at least thirteen Afghan onion farmers and their children. The Australian forces unleashed this massacre after an SAS patrol commander “accidentally” shot one of the farmers and then the patrol decided to murder all the witnesses to cover up the initial crime.
In the middle of their brutal twenty year occupation of Afghanistan, Western forces invaded Libya and overthrew the Gaddafi government there for the “crime” of refusing to totally align his policies with their predatory designs over Libya’s and Africa’s economy. The Pine Gap, U.S./Australia joint spy base in Australia’s Northern Territory worked over time to pinpoint NATO’s air and missile strikes in Libya. The Australian-backed NATO invaders ended up killing tens of thousands of Libyan civilians. They imposed a regime change that not only resulted in ten years of bloody infighting amongst NATO’s puppets installed into power but triggered the racist slaughter of thousands of black-skinned Libyans and migrant workers from Chad, Niger, Somalia and Nigeria. To all this we must add Western imperialism’s proxy war on Syria which killed hundreds of thousands of people, the mid-2010s U.S./British/Australian bombing campaign over Syria and Iraq which killed over ten thousand more innocent people in “accidental” air strikes, the killing of thousands of civilians in U.S. drone strikes in Northwest Pakistan, America’s provocative assassination of a top Iranian general in January 2020, the tens of thousands made to die prematurely as a result of starvation Western-initiated sanctions on the people of North Korea, Iran, Syria and Venezuela, Israel’s Washington and Canberra-backed genocidal terror on the Palestinian people and Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states’ terrifying U.S.-orchestrated war in Yemen. Meanwhile, here in Australia, the sovereignty and rights of Aboriginal people continue to be brutally crushed by Australia’s racist ruling class.
So for the Western regimes to now condemn Russia for violating the sovereignty of another country is the vilest hypocrisy. For them to claim that Russia’s operation in Ukraine has disrupted an otherwise “peaceful world order” is the most revolting lie. Tell that to the people of Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Somalia, Palestine, Yemen, Pakistan, Serbia, Bougainville, Iran, Syria, etc, etc! The fact is that the U.S., British, Australian, German, Canadian and French regimes disrupt world peace and make new violations upon the sovereignty of other countries more frequently than most people change their toothbrushes! And they have been unleashing air or ground attacks on peoples around the world more often than we clean our teeth! What is driving their murderous actions is neither sadism nor irrationality, although the capitalist system certainly does attract into leading positions irrational and sadistic people. Rather, the actions of these Western regimes flow quite logically from their roles as enforcers of the interests of the capitalist big business owners of their respective countries. In capitalism’s current, final phase, the capitalists of the richest countries not only exploit their own workers but exploit at an even more severe rate the toiling classes of the poorer countries, while plundering the natural resources of these countries and grabbing control of markets there. It is not a choice of these capitalists of the richer countries whether or not to act in this imperialist way. For them it is a necessity. The capitalist system at its advanced stage has outgrown national boundaries. Unless the capitalists of the wealthier nations engage in this imperialist robbery of the poorer countries, capitalist economies will implode under the weight of their own internal contradictions.
We should add here that being a big country with a powerful army that sends it forces abroad does notnecessarily make one an imperial power. India for example, with its huge army and aggressive capitalist ruling class, is not an imperialist country but remains a semi-colonial victim of imperialism, thoroughly exploited, manipulated by and financially subservient to the real imperialists. Imperialism rather means the capitalists of the richer countries super-exploiting the masses of the ex-colonies in Asia, Africa, the Pacific, the Middle East and South and Central America through the export of capital and by using the threat of cutting off access to capital, markets and technology as a means to blackmail the peoples of the poorer countries into submission. It also means the regimes that serve these rich country capitalists unleashing horrendous violence against the peoples of their neo-colonies and semi-colonies in order to enforce this robbery.
Russia’s capitalist rulers dream of using their military and technological strength inherited from the Soviet Union to once again become a fully-fledged imperialist power, as they were in Tsarist times. Yet, although future events could change this, currently, Russia’s capitalists don’t quite yet have the economic strength or the capital provided by a richer imperial ally to seriously displace Western capital from their domination over the “Third World”. Right now, it is not Russia, but the U.S., Britain, Australia, France, Germany, Canada and their ilk who are the thugs bullying and exploiting much of the world’s people. Over the last 33 years, these Western capitalist regimes – and their Saudi and Israeli allies – have together killed more than FOUR MILLION people around the world through imperialist invasions, terror bombing, proxy wars, war crimes, drone strikes and sanctions. When the Western powers interfere into the current conflict in Ukraine by increasing military aid to Ukraine, imposing sanctions on Russia and bullying diplomacy, it is with the sole purpose of fortifying this bloody tyranny over much of the world. In particular, by punishing Russia – and in the process causing great suffering to her people through economic sanctions – the Western imperialists want to send a message to both Russia and other powers that no one should ever again dare to take any military action that harms their interests. We should not allow the U.S., British, Australian and other Western imperialist regimes to in this way reinforce their supremacy over the world and their monopoly over the use of violence in international relations. We should not allow them to pour more oil on the flames of the bloody conflict in Ukraine. The working class of the world, the billions of people suffering under Western imperial domination and all opponents of imperialism must demand: Western imperialism stop your aggressive intervention into the Ukraine conflict! No to your sanctions on Russia! Stop your flow of arms to Ukraine! Down with your plans to extend NATO eastwards! Down with NATO! Down with your schemes to seize on this war to whip up a “national security” obsession at home so that you can escalate your Cold War drive against socialistic China! We must understand that it is only the Russian and Ukrainian working classes who can end this war in a progressive manner by uniting with each other against each of their own aggressive capitalist ruling classes.
The Main Enemy is the Capitalist Ruling Class At Home
To understand that the Western capitalist ruling classes are by far the biggest oppressors of the world’s peoples does not mean that we need to prettify Russia’s capitalist ruling class – nor Ukraine’s. Putin and Zelensky can be thought of as the Scott Morrisons or indeed the Peter Duttons of Russia and Ukraine. However, unlike Morrison, Putin does not represent a regime that is part of the most powerful imperialist bloc in the world. Moreover, as nasty as the Russian capitalist ruling class is, it is not the main enemy of the working class and oppressed of Australia. The reason that 300,000 people were homeless in Australia at some point during last year is not because of Putin but because anti-working class Australian governments have sold off so much public housing that rental accommodation has become ever more unaffordable for lower-income workers and unemployed workers. It is telling too that just four days before Morrison ranted that Russia’s rulers were “thugs and “bullies”, yet another Aboriginal youth died as the result of a police action in Australia. Sixteen year-old electrician apprentice, Jai Wright, was killed in inner city Sydney after the trail bike he was riding was hit by a police car. The killed youth’s family have exposed how the police have told them two completely contradictory stories about how the crash occurred. The death of Jai Wright is showing all the hallmarks of the notorious 2004 police murder of 17 year-old Aboriginal youth, TJ Hickey, who was killed not far from where Jai Wright was hit when he was rammed by a police vehicle sending him flying onto a fence that impaled him. Since 1991, over 500 Aboriginal people have died in state custody. Many of the victims, like TJ Hickey, Mulrunji Doomadgee and David Dungay, were simply murdered by racist cops or prison guards. And the rivals of Australia’s ruling class thousands of kilometres away in Russia have nothing to do with these atrocities. These are wholly the crimes of the racist, rich people’s regime right here… the same one that has today been sanctimoniously attacking Russia!
It needs to be pointed out too that even as Australia’s rulers shed crocodile tears over the suffering brought by the war in Ukraine, here they have caused nearly 3,300 people to die from COVID in 2022 alone because they callously allowed COVID to rip while undermining testing and tracing services. This cruel policy, driven by their intent to put the interests of capitalist business owners above the welfare of the masses, has disproportionately hit low-paid frontline workers and their families – many of whom are from Middle Eastern, Asian and African backgrounds. In pursuing this profits-first policy, Australia’s ruling class has caused dozens of times more people to die from COVID here in 2022 than the number of civilians who have thus far perished in the bloody conflict in Ukraine.
However, there has also been resistance against the oppressors at home. Angered by the fact that their wages have barely risen while prices have surged, workers have waged more strike action over the last year than in quite a while. And with the NSW Liberal state government refusing to hire enough workers to staff key public sector roles, the last few months has seen nurses, rail workers, bus drivers and teachers unleash a wave of industrial action. However, such resistance will be weakened and the authority of the increasingly distrusted, rich people’s regimes will be restored to the extent that working class people buy the lie that they need to unite with the capitalist rulers against supposed external foes – in Russia and socialistic China. If the masses fall for this swindle, it will enable the capitalist regime to attack working class and other progressive struggles as “unpatriotic acts” that “endanger national security.” We will then see more outrages like the one unleashed by NSW transport minister, David Elliot, two weeks ago when he accused rail workers of “terrorist-like activity” for merely engaging in low-level industrial action. That is why politically aware workers must convince their co-workers that the main enemy of working class people here is not far away in Moscow but is rather the capitalist ruling class right here. They must explain that we should NOT unite with this Australian ruling class to defend “national security.” When the ruling class talk “national security” they only mean the “security” of their predatory interests and their capitalist system of exploitation. So rather than being sucked into helping our exploiters and oppressors fight their overseas foes, let us wage class war against these capitalist exploiters! Let’s fight for big wage rises, for a guaranteed minimum wage and all the rights of permanency for all gig and casual workers, for a massive increase in public housing, for union action to oppose racist state terror against Aboriginal people and for the rights of citizenship for all guest workers, international students and refugees.
The Roots of the Conflict in Ukraine
The 1991-92 capitalist counterrevolution that destroyed working class rule in Russia and the other lands of the former Soviet Union (USSR) was thoroughly backed, and indeed brains trusted, by U.S. imperialism and allies. Therefore, these Western powers had enormous sway over the new capitalist states that emerged over the lands of the former USSR. To be sure, given the enormous economic development and technical progress of the peoples of the region during Soviet times, the Western imperialists were not able to turn these countries into neocolonies that are plundered in the same way that, say, Australian capitalists rob the people of PNG and East Timor today or the way that American, Japanese, British and Australian capital super-exploits the toiling classes of Indonesia and the Philippines. Nevertheless, Washington and to a lesser extent other Western regimes grabbed control of the markets in these countries, dictated to the fledgling new capitalist leaders, forced them to implement privatisation schemes even more rapidly than even they wanted and treated the peoples of these countries in a patronising way. In some ways the relationship between the Western powers and the countries of the former USSR was like the relationship between the U.S. and, say, South Korea, which is not a superexploited economic semi-colony of Western imperialism but is nevertheless dictated to and bullied by Washington.
For the first decade after their restoration to power, the capitalist rulers in the biggest and most powerful of the ex-Soviet countries, Russia, grudgingly accepted this subordinate status. However, after they stabilised their rule and after surging oil prices at the start of 21st century flushed these rulers of oil-rich Russia with new wealth, Russia’s capitalist rulers began to push back against high-handedness from Washington and her European NATO allies. Moreover, Russia’s increasingly ambitious rulers began to pursue their dream of becoming the imperialist top dogs of the ex-Soviet region. Washington and the West European imperialists resisted this new-found assertiveness of their former Russian underlings. They sought to push Russia’s down into the subordinate status that it had during the 1990s. This sharp clash over what Russia should be, between on the one hand, the U.S.-led drive to return her to being a patronised, Western-dependent country and on the other, the Russian ruling class’ ambitions to become a new imperial power, is the underlying conflict from which arises all disputes between the NATO powers and Russia’s rulers.
The Western mainstream media have very inaccurately portrayed the project to restore Russia’s Tsarist imperial “glory” as a personal project of Putin. In fact, it is an ambition supported by the majority of Russia’s capitalist class. That is why Putin’s military intervention into Ukraine was overwhelmingly supported by the Russian parliament. The change in attitude of Russia’s ruling class did not come with Putin acquiring the presidency in 1999. It is worth noting that in the mid and late 1990s, Putin was a loyal functionary of then president Boris Yelstin, when the latter ran an administration that accepted Russia’s subordinate position to the U.S. and Germany. What changed was not Putin but the economic and political conditions – not least the world oil price.
Being a country that is not at this stage a fully-fledged imperialist power, there remains a wing of the Russian capitalist class that thinks that their interests would be better served if Russia were to again become a subordinate partner to the NATO powers. Today, many in this wing of the Russian elite support the prominent Western-backed opposition figure, Alexei Navalny. The Western media would like to portray Navalny and other pro-Western forces as “liberals” as opposed to pro-Putin “authoritarians”. However, the pro-Western wing of the Russian capitalist class is not necessarily more “democratic” than the dominant, independent wing. If the pro-Westerners make demands opposing government censorship it is largely only because they are out of political power and want more space to gain the ascendancy. But it is very important to note that Navalny has marched in extreme right-wing anti-immigrant marches and has demanded in the past that migrants be deported from Russia. Hardly a true “liberal democrat”!
Western ruling classes are also divided about what attitude they should take towards Russia. In the U.S. there is a wing of the capitalist class that believes that Washington should accommodate to a degree Moscow’s concerns and ambitions. They hope for a U.S.-Russia capitalist super-power alliance against their main enemy: socialistic China. They also see the possibility of using Russian military might as a counter-weight to the economic strength of their German and French allies cum competitors. This is the agenda that hard right former U.S. president Donald Trump originally wanted to pursue but was blocked by a wall of opposition from other wings of the American capitalist class. Even Biden, when he first took office, signaled the possibility of improving U.S. relations with capitalist Russia in order to isolate the Chinese workers state. However, moves to improve Washington-Moscow relations became unstuck because capitalist economic realities drove the two regimes apart. Especially given the growing contradictions in capitalist economies and now hit by COVID, the American and other Western capitalists need to increasingly exploit the poorer countries and further dominate their markets. They simply cannot allow a new imperial power to emerge and contest for the markets and resources that they have so jealously apportioned for themselves. Meanwhile, Russian capitalism with its own economic woes cannot afford to see itself being further displaced by Western capitalists from the huge market for its exports that existed in Ukraine and other former Soviet lands. Thus, although it is not impossible that capitalist enmity to socialism could in the future still unite Washington and Moscow into a grand capitalist alliance against Red China, right now, like the inevitable clash between existing Mafia godfathers and a new kid in the block gang that they seek to contain and subordinate, the conflict between the most powerful Western imperialist robbers and their emerging Russian rival has reached breaking point.
Ukraine has been a key battleground of this clash. In the 1990s when Russian capitalism was subordinated to the Western powers, Washington, Berlin, Paris and London were relatively content to allow Kiev to have amicable relations with Moscow. However, as Russia became more independent and self-confident during the 21st century, the Western powers pushed for Ukraine to move away from Russia and give them prized access to the Ukrainian market for their exports. As a result, the issue of whether Ukraine should be more closely aligned with, on the one hand, the U.S. and Europe or, on the other, Russia, became the defining issue in Ukrainian political life. At the 2002 parliamentary elections, parties favouring closer ties with Russia were voted in. Two years later, despite blatant interference by Washington in support of the pro-Western candidate, the pro-Russia candidate Viktor Yanukovych won presidential elections. However, spurred on by Washington, the defeated forces challenged the validity of the results through street protests. The parties and NGOs leading these protests were funded directly by the U.S. government and its various agencies like Freedom House as well as by pro-imperialist American “NGOs”. Meanwhile, these American agencies and NGOs provided training on rebellion tactics to their Ukrainian allies. The U.S. campaign in the end succeeded. In a coup, dubbed the “Orange Revolution”, Yanukovych’s election victory was annulled and the pro-Western candidate arose to the presidency. However, at subsequent elections, the parties brought to power by the Washington-backed “Orange Revolution” were voted out by the people. Ukrainian administrations became a revolving door as neither the pro-Western wing of the capitalist elite nor its pro-Moscow wing could satisfy the aspirations of the masses.
In late 2013, then president Yanukovych backed away from signing an agreement for closer integration with the European Union. Ukraine had asked the EU for a loan to make up for the cost of making changes to her economy required by the agreement. The EU and the IMF demanded that Ukraine implement neoliberal changes to her economy as the price for any loans – such as removing gas subsidies. Fearing unrest from implementing such policies, the Yanukovych administration instead looked towards closer ties with Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan. Pro-Western parties responded with a campaign of street protests that were again funded and “advised” by U.S. government agencies and NGOs. They were aided in mobilising these protests by widespread anger at the government over rampant corruption and falling living standards. This was the “Orange Revolution” Version 2. However, things were different this time around. The U.S. involvement was even more overt. Especially with their own economy weakened following the Great Recession, the American ruling class really needed to get a greater share of the Ukrainian market, which at that time was still dominated by exports from Russia. Meanwhile, the polarisation within Ukraine had also become more intense. Nourished by this polarisation and the ongoing misery caused by the late noughties recession, the far-right had become a major factor in Ukraine. The main activist force behind the anti-government movement, dubbed Euromaidan, was now the extreme right-wing Svoboba Party, an outfit that espouses hatred of Russians, Jews and immigrants. Forming the shock troops of Euromaidan was the even more extreme Pravy Sektor (Right Sector), a neo-Nazi paramilitary group which had already become notorious for attacks on international students and immigrants. As a result, by early 2014, the “protests” became increasingly violent. Rioters assaulted – and in some cases murdered – opponents of the movement. The increasingly influential fascist factions opposed any compromise deal with Yanukovych. As a result, Yanukovych was deposed. His administration was replaced by a coalition dominated by right-wing conservatives and the fascistic Svoboda party. What happened in early 2014 was like last year’s January 6 far-right uprising in Washington, with the crucial difference that in Ukraine the right-wing forces actually triumphed. For the second time in a decade an elected Russia-friendly president in Ukraine had been overthrown in a U.S.-backed coup.
Popular Sentiment in Eastern Ukraine and Russia against the Euromaidan Regime
After the Euromaidan coup, Ukraine became even more polarised geographically between the West of the country and the South and East of Ukraine, with its high percentage of Russian speakers and minorities. In the West, the mood was pro-Western and Ukrainian nationalist, with the areas being strongholds of the pro-EU conservatives and the Far Right. The South and the East of Ukraine, however, wanted closer ties with Russia and supported Yanukovych’s Party of Regions or the Communist Party of Ukraine. This polarisation deepened still further when just two days after the coup, the new nationalist government voted to repeal a language law that allowed Russian – and in some smaller areas Hungarian, Moldovan and Romanian – to be used as a regional second language in schools and government institutions in those areas where there is a high proportion of speakers of these languages. This repeal, the coup toppling the pro-Russian president, violent attacks on opponents of the anti-Russia forces during Euromaidan and the presence of extreme anti-Russian figures in the new regime led to angry protests in the South and East. In the Crimean Peninsula, where the population was overwhelmingly Russian, large demonstrations started to call for withdrawal from Ukraine and accession to Russia. Then following a referendum where Crimea voted 95% for seceding from Ukraine and joining Russia – with an 83% voter turnout – Russia annexed Crimea.
In the majority Russian-speaking Donetsk and Luhansk districts, the Euromaidan coup triggered a rebellion against the new regime. This was met with brutal repression by the Ukrainian military and far-right volunteer paramilitary organisations. Many of the latter have been funded by Ukrainian oligarchs, like Ukraine’s second richest billionaire, Ihor Kolomoyskyi. Most prominent among these paramilitaries is the Azov Battalion. As well as recruiting Ukrainian right-wing extremists, Azov has been a magnet for white supremacists from Sweden, Spain, the U.S., Croatia and Italy. Azov has conducted brutal attacks on leftists and minorities – especially targeting Roma people. Within Donetsk and Luhansk, Azov and the other fascist paramilitary outfits have committed the most horrific atrocities including murdering civilians and raping and torturing detainees. These crimes have hardened the resolve of the Russian-speaking rebels. Initially they mostly demanded greater autonomy. Now, most of the ethnic Russians – and even many Russian-speaking ethnic Ukrainians – in these districts want independence.
The struggle for self-determination of the Russian-speaking people of Donetsk and Luhansk is a just struggle, in essence similar to the Palestinian people’s struggle, the Tamil struggle for national self-determination in Sri Lanka and struggle for independence of the people of West Papua. It is also somewhat different to these struggles in that in the case of the Donbass, adjacent to the people demanding self-determination exists, in the form of Russia, a powerful neighbour dominated by a people based on the same ethnicity/language group. As a result there is a Russian chauvinist strain within the rebellion. Worryingly, Russian rightwing extremists from outfits like the Russian National Unity group have come from Russia to join the movement and some of these fascists have also committed attacks on Roma. Additionally, the Hungarian neo-Nazi Jobbik Party, the Serbian far-right, anti-communist Chetniks and the fascist British National Party are also backing the Donbass rebellion and Australian white supremacist parties have given moral support. At the same time, it should be noted that the fascist component of the Donbass rebellion seems smaller than in the Ukrainian paramilitary irregulars opposing them. Moreover, given the just character of the Donbass people’s demands, leftist groups have also formed a component of the Donbass uprising.
Other than the issue of language and ethnic persecution, there is another aspect to the hostility to the Kiev regime within the East of Ukraine. Not only is the East, where ethnic Russians mix together with both Russian-speaking and Ukrainian-speaking Ukrainians, Belarussians, Jews and Greeks, more cosmopolitan than the West of the country, its population has a higher percentage of wage workers – especially blue collar workers – due to the area being more industrialised. As a result, a large chunk of the population there has sympathy for socialism and is nostalgic for the much better life that they had in Soviet times. Therefore, when the post-Euromaidan regime began knocking down monuments to the Soviet Union and to the Red Army’s heroic victory over Nazi Germany, this provoked outrage amongst many in Eastern Ukraine. This sentiment was reinforced, when in 2015, the Ukrainian regime despicably made two Nazi-collaborating, anti-Soviet Ukrainian paramilitary groups (the UPA and the OUN), “heroes of Ukraine.” During World War II, the UPA and OUN between them murdered 100,000 Polish people and tens of thousands of Jewish people, while helping their Nazi allies to carry out the Holocaust.
Through the many family and other personal connections that people in the East of Ukraine have with those in Russia, their hostile feelings towards the Ukrainian regime became known to people inside Russia. Meanwhile, reports of the atrocities committed by the Ukrainian military and especially its far-right paramilitary auxiliaries against Russian-speaking people caused disgust within Russia. As a result, although Putin’s decision to unleash the Russian military against the Ukrainian regime reflects the interests of the Russian capitalist class that he serves, Putin was, to some degree, egged on by popular hostility to the Kiev authorities amongst some Russians.
Washington Provoked This Conflict
The weeks leading up to the Russian intervention saw meetings between Russian and Western leaders. The main issue was Russia’s demand that NATO give guarantees that it would not expand further eastwards into Ukraine, that is, not expand right up to Russia’s western border. Russia, quite understandably, sees that prospect as threatening. As part of the then Soviet Union, the people of Russia lost some 20 million of their compatriots when Germany invaded the Soviet Union from the west during World War II. Washington and the mainstream Western media denounced Russia’s demands saying it is outrageous and unprecedented for a government to be demanding that a government of a neighbouring country not undertake the security arrangement of its own choosing. Unprecedented? Really? Well in October 1962, then U.S. president John F. Kennedy came within a hairsbreadth of starting World War 3 when he took military action to stop socialistic Cuba from deploying missiles belonging to her Soviet ally on her own territory. Cuba had quite correctly asked for the Soviet missiles to protect her from a future U.S. invasion following the United States’ failed Bay of Pigs Invasion of their island country the year before. After the Soviets began setting up the missiles, the U.S. carried out a provocative naval blockade of Cuba. An all out nuclear war between the superpowers was only averted after the Soviets backed down.
Although Washington completely rejected Moscow’s concerns there were signs from some of its allies of some degree of willingness to negotiate with Moscow. As few as ten days before the Russian intervention, Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky made a partial concession to Russia by playing down the prospect of Ukraine joining NATO, describing it as a remote “dream” that is out of the question for the foreseeable future. He also suggested a willingness to compromise on the Donbass issue. However, under pressure from both the American regime and Ukraine’s own Far Right and pushed by Washington’s hardline refusal to give even the most minimal security guarantees to Russia during their negotiations with Moscow, Zelensky changed his tune and again thumbed his nose at Moscow’s demands.
Even Washington’s European NATO partners showed some willingness to be flexible. German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, stated that, “The question of [Ukrainian] membership in alliances is practically not on the agenda.” Meanwhile, French president Emmanuel Macron sought to reach a Western compromise with Russia. Up until now, the German and French imperialists have taken a less hardline stance against Russia than their American NATO counterparts. This is because these European powers are quietly keeping in reserve the possibility of, in the future, aligning themselves with capitalist Russia in a pan-European-Eurasian capitalist alliance that would, with the political leverage provided by Russian military might, enable the French and German imperialists to flip their current subordinate position in their relationship with their American ally-cum-competitor. However, Washington is only too aware of all this. So, they poured scorn on Macron’s efforts to seek a compromise with Putin. Furthermore, just as they pressured Zelensky to abandon his overtures to Moscow, they aggressively pushed Berlin to take a harder line against Russia. Biden was assisted in exerting this pressure on Social Democrat chancellor Scholz by the latter’s own partner in coalition government, the war-mongering German Greens (whose foreign policy is very similar to that of U.S. neo-conservatives like John Bolton … albeit with a “progressive liberal” and green face!). Thus, the U.S. imperialists ensured that there would be no compromise. Meanwhile, as Ukraine-Russia tensions escalated over the last year, the U.S. rulers poured oil into the fire at an even greater rate by stepping up arms supplies to Ukraine. In many different ways, they provoked this war!
However, just like their European counterparts, Washington has had its imperialist interests violated by Russia’s military operation. So why then did Biden and Co. provoke the Russian invasion? For one, although the U.S. capitalist class’ interests in Ukraine have been threatened by Russia’s intervention, those interests are far less than those of the European imperialists. It is the German and other European capitalists, rather than their U.S. counterparts, who gained the greatest share of the Ukrainian market following the Euromaidan coup. Moreover, given their location, it is the European imperialists who are most buffeted by Moscow pushing back against NATO in Russia’s neighbouring region. Furthermore, not only have the U.S. imperialists lost less than their European counterparts as a result of Putin’s intervention, they have gained far more. To see why, we should look closely at the shifts that have taken place over the two weeks. Firstly, U.S. leadership over other NATO countries has been reinforced – at least for the time being. Given that the U.S. is by far the strongest military power in NATO, another power taking military action that harms NATO interests naturally brings the question of military power to the fore and highlights U.S. pre-eminence in this area. So to Washington’s delight, the events of the last few days have caused Berlin and Paris to bow down to Washington and put back in their draws, at least for the moment, their plans to stride out on a more independent course. The U.S. rulers have long wanted to shore up their leadership position over the West so that they can sometimes elbow out their European allies-cum-rivals in competition over markets in Eastern Europe, the former Soviet Union and the developing world.
Secondly, the U.S. hopes to now use military aid to Ukraine and sanctions on Russia to slowly bleed its Russian capitalist rival. Washington hopes that by tying down Russia in a war and its aftermath in Ukraine, Russia will not be able to impede Western military pressure against China. Although all the Western powers broadly share such an outlook, the economic costs to the U.S. of sanctions on Russia is far less than those that will be borne by Germany and other European powers. The U.S. is far, far less dependent on Russian energy imports and trade with Russia than their West European counterparts. Thirdly, after the horrifyingly brutal invasions that it led in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and many other places, the U.S. now hopes that the Russian intervention in Ukraine will allow Washington to cynically portray itself to the world as, quite unbelievably, the leading protector of countries’ sovereignty! Moreover, it hopes to not only bring widespread condemnation upon its Russian adversary but by association hopes to discredit China, given that the latter is a world power that has friendly relations with Russia. Fourthly, chest beating over the war in Ukraine has enabled America’s capitalist rulers to divert attention away from the worsening condition of the masses in the USA. Workers there are furious that their wages have failed to keep up with price increases, which soared by 7.5% over the last year. Meanwhile, despite using less overtly racist rhetoric than the previous Trump administration, the Biden presidency oversees continued racist police terror against black people and other people of colour as well as brutal repression against Latin American migrants seeking entry into the US.
Lastly, by provoking military action by a NATO adversary right on Europe’s doorstep, the U.S. rulers have managed to push some of the major European NATO members to commit to increased military spending. Although the U.S. ruling class sees the German-led European capitalists as competitors, as well as current allies, it has long sought to prod these European NATO members to increase their defence budgets. Expecting that it will be able to continue to maintain its leadership over NATO, Washington wants European powers to play a bigger role in both U.S.-led military adventures in the ex-colonial countries and in “maintaining peace and security in Europe”, by which they mean confronting countries in that region that refuse to adhere to the Western-dominated world “order” – like Russia and Belarus today and Serbia in 1999. This push for European powers to play a bigger military role in U.S.-led operations is aimed in good part in freeing the U.S. to concentrate greater forces against its main target: socialistic China. Moreover, the U.S. hopes that better armed European NATO powers will themselves play a bigger role in squeezing China. There is also another obvious reason why the U.S. regime want European NATO powers to increase their defence spending. It is because U.S. corporations are by far the world’s biggest defence contractors. The filthy rich capitalists that own American defence giants like Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and Raytheon are set to make an absolute fortune from the increased European military spending that is resulting from this war that has been provoked by their government in Washington.
Stand With Socialistic China – The Main Target of U.S. and Australian Imperialism
Unlike their U.S. and West European allies, the Australian imperialists have few economic interests in the former Soviet countries. So why then is the Australian regime getting involved in the sanctions against Russia and the arms flow to Ukraine? We know that this has nothing to do with defending a people’s right to sovereignty. After all, the current political order here was formed from the genocidal dispossession of Aboriginal people, a crime which the Australian regime continues to base itself upon. For Canberra, their response to the Ukraine conflict is overwhelmingly about backing their U.S. and British allies. Australian capitalists have an interest in maintaining the U.S.-led Western domination of the world. It is U.S. might that provides the shield for Australian imperialism to exploit, rob and bully the masses of this region – the peoples of PNG, East Timor, Fiji, Solomon Islands, Indonesia, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Thailand, etc. Thus, the Australian regime supports the U.S. everywhere in the same way that a local mafia boss always defends the supremacy of the particular big-time mafia godfather that is guaranteeing his local tyranny.
At the same time, Australian regime officials have previously urged their U.S. allies in private not to be distracted with Russia. The Australian imperialists want their senior partners focused on targeting Red China. Whereas Australia’s capitalist rulers have been joining anti-Russia actions out of their need to back their U.S. godfather, when it comes to attacking China, Canberra has actually been egging on Washington to be ever more aggressive. Today, Australia’s rulers are working their hardest to give their stance on Ukraine an anti-China bent. Indeed, Morrison and his hard rightwing defence minister, Peter Dutton, seem to be spending even more time attacking China than Russia. Morrison ranted against China for not condemning Russia’s actions in Ukraine. Yet, notably, he had no criticism of his Quad partner India also abstaining on the Western-orchestrated UN resolutions attacking Russia. Meanwhile, Australian politicians and media have been trying to equate China with Russia, suggesting that Putin’s intervention might encourage China to “threaten” countries in the Asia-Pacific. Of course, in spreading this lie of a Chinese military “threat”, they avoid mentioning that not only is China the only world power not to have fought a shooting war against an overseas country in the 21st century, she has actually not participated in a single such war in 44 years. Indeed, the deadly fighting raging today in Ukraine – not to mention the horrific results of the Western interventions in Bougainville, Iraq, Somalia, Serbia, Afghanistan, Libya, Palestine and Yemen – make a mockery of the Australian regime’s attempts to produce concrete evidence of a Chinese “threat”. Three weeks ago, however, Morrison and Albanese thought that they could finally produce such a smoking gun… or rather a shining light! They ranted that China had committed a terrible act of “aggression” when, in international waters, the Chinese Navy had… pointed a light, a laser, on an Australian warplane (that it turns out had been buzzing provocatively close to a Chinese warship). Shock horror!
So why are they manufacturing this Chinese “threat”? The answer is simple. The capitalist regimes’ hostility to China is based on the fact that the People’s Republic of China (PRC) is a socialistic state. Although China allowed in a fair degree of capitalism from the 1980s onwards, the working class continues to cling onto power in the PRC and ensures that the backbone role in her economy is formed by socialist public ownership – the mode of economic organisation that favours the working class. Thus, the Western capitalist regimes oppose the PRC for the very same reason that capitalist owners of a company oppose a militant trade union active at their workplace. They know that the existence of the Chinese workers state is a threat to their interests. They fear that the mere fact of working class rule in China will, in the future, entice working class people in the capitalist countries to also want to seize state power. This is especially the case because although China’s transition towards socialism is both fraught and far from complete, it is very easy to see the benefits that socialistic rule has brought to the Chinese masses in terms of poverty alleviation, infrastructure construction, pandemic response and improvement in social status of women.
Therefore, although socialistic China is no military threat to the people of Australia, she is by her very existence as a workers state a political threat to the system of capitalist exploitation here. However, for the very same reason that the Chinese workers state politically threatens the interests of Australia’s ruling class she is a great asset for the working class masses of Australia and the world. That is why we must stand in defence of socialistic rule in China against all the threats that she faces. We must demand: Down with the U.S./Australia/Britain military build-up against the PRC and her socialistic North Korean ally! No nuclear submarines for the Australian regime! Down with the lying “human rights” propaganda attacks on China over Uyghurs, Tibet and Hong Kong!
Capitalism Leads to Catastrophic Wars
The events of the last two weeks show what a dangerous world we live in. It is not only the bloody fighting in Ukraine. It is also the fact that the most deadly forces on the planet, the U.S., British, West European and Australian ruling classes, have used this conflict to stir up militarism at home to frightening levels. Seemingly “liberal” Australian media outlets celebrate reports – possibly faked – of Ukrainian pre-school age children wanting to kill Russians and hail Australians, likely admirers of the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion, volunteering to fight on the side of Ukraine. Meanwhile, Western ruling class “NGO” think tanks and strategists casually speak of waging all out war on their main target, Red China, as they debate whether it is worth committing forces to contain Russia given that, as they blithely put it, “a missile used in Europe can’t be used in Asia”!
It is highly unlikely, however, that this current conflict will spiral directly into World War 3. One reason is that so soon after their humiliating defeat in Afghanistan, the Western imperialists will find it difficult to con their populations into accepting direct participation in a new war, especially one against a military superpower. Secondly, the U.S., British and Australian imperialists want to save their forces for use against their main target: socialistic China. Thirdly, precisely because Russia is not at this point a fully-fledged imperialist power, the compulsion of the real imperialist powers to wage war on her is of a less intense scale. In other words, given that the markets and spheres of exploitation controlled by Russian capitalists are mostly at a regional, rather than a widespread global level, the amount of added imperialist exploitation that the richer Western capitalists could open up should Russia be defeated is relatively moderate in scale. Given that Russia is the world’s number two military power, the massive military cost that the Western imperialists would bear in trying to defeat Russia exceeds the economic gain that they would achieve from crushing her. This is how logical imperialist exploiters would think. At the same time we should realise that the capitalist ruling classes do not always act logically. Each of them are cruel and dying beasts that have long outlived their useful life. As these dying beasts thrash around desperately trying to cling onto life at the expense of those around them and often in conflict with each other, they are each capable of sometimes whipping themselves up into such a frenzy and panic that they act against their own logical interests. That is why, while it is highly unlikely that the Western imperialists will inflame this conflict still further until it blows up into World War 3… it is not 100% impossible that we will head straight to the next horrifying World War!
Right now, however, the most likely route to World War 3 is an imperialist attack on China. Of course, such an agenda is not entirely logical from even a capitalist point of view. If much of humanity is destroyed in a nuclear Armageddon there are less workers for capitalists to exploit and a smaller market to sell to. However, the economic forces driving capitalist powers into conflict with socialistic China are very strong. To make up for the internal contradictions of their economies at home, capitalists in the richer countries can only stay afloat if they increase the rate at which they loot the countries of the developing world. However, through both her aid programs and her mutually beneficial relations with developing countries, Red China is impeding the ability of the rich country capitalists to carry out the imperialist exploitation of these poorer countries. Moreover, the existence of working class rule in China is preventing the Western and Japanese capitalists from turning China into a huge sweatshop for them to exploit the way that they have already transformed large swathes of the likes of Indonesia, India, Bangladesh and the Philippines. Facing deep going economic problems at home, these imperialists simply cannot afford to allow the labour force of a country with one in five of the world’s people to be kept away from their exploitation and a market of nearly 1.5 billion people to be free from their domination. Put simply, the very solvency of the richest capitalist powers demands their destruction of socialistic rule in China… by any means necessary.
The other most likely path to humanity’s destruction in a world war is a conflict between the imperialist powers themselves. To be sure, over the last few days the different competing imperial powers have come together behind Washington against the dissident capitalist power, Russia. However, this present unity could be short-lived. Berlin and France have different interests on what the future of their ties with Moscow should be than Washington does. What’s more, the European powers are suffering much greater economic pain from the breakdown in the West’s relations with Russia than the U.S. is. Therefore, when serious negotiations progress to end this conflict – whether it is in the wake of a complete or partial Russian victory or an apparent stalemate – sharp differences could emerge between a Washington insistent that Ukraine should fight to the last drop of her own people’s blood and German-led European powers more willing to reach a compromise. Such tensions at the end of this war could then pave the way several years later for a more dangerous ramping up in inter-imperialist rivalry. Then there are the Japanese imperialists waiting in the wings. Although seemingly content today to play second fiddle to their U.S. allies, the Japanese ruling class, only too aware of their long-stagnant economy, have been aggressively promoting militarism in an effort to counter the deep pacifist sentiments amongst large parts of her population.
Given the disastrous consequences to all that would follow, it would seem crazy that capitalist powers would yet again drag humanity into another world war. Yet, as the way that the U.S. rulers have provoked this current war has shown, this is where this capitalist system leads to. In particular, because there is only a finite amount of labour, raw materials and markets in the poorer countries for the capitalists of the richer countries to grab, these imperialists are inevitably drawn into fierce conflict with each other for the “right” to subjugate the different developing countries. That is why only the sweeping away of the capitalist world disorder through socialist revolution can ensure humanity’s continued survival.
Socialism and War
The attitude of us communists to war is not based on the meaningless slogan of “No War”, which every side in any war can claim to stand on providing that “peace” is achieved on their terms. Rather we understand that both lasting world peace and an end to all exploitation and oppression can only come about through the overturn of the capitalist system that breeds war. Therefore, our entire policy on war is based on advancing the struggle for socialist revolution. We do so by adhering to long established Leninist principles on what attitude should be taken to each of the different types of war. We apply these principles rigidly. There can be no exceptions. Seeking exceptions on Leninist principles on war inevitably means capitulating to the nationalism and propaganda of one or another capitalist camp in a war. Given that we are entering a dangerous period where wars and the threat of wars will be even more likely, we below outline the Leninist principles on war.
The first type of war that there can be is a class war between the forces of the capitalist exploiting class – and in some cases its rural landlord allies – on the one side and the forces of the working class and other exploited classes on the other. Such class wars can take two forms. In one form, the exploiting class is in power and wages war against the exploited classes seeking their liberation. Such a war was the 1946-49 Chinese Civil War between the Chinese capitalist-landlord exploiting class and the Communist-led poor peasants and workers. In such wars we must stand unconditionally for the victory for the exploited classes fighting for their liberation. That means we would have been full-on on the side of the Communist Party of China-led toiling classes in the Chinese Civil War. Today, despite differences in political strategy, we stand for the defence of the New Peoples Army of the Communist Party of the Philippines – standing for the rural exploited classes there – in their battles against the Philippines regime that upholds the interests of the capitalists and the agricultural landlord exploiters.
The other form of class war is a conflict between the working class already holding state power on the one side and, on the other, either internal forces of capitalist restoration or external capitalist states. In such wars, we stand unconditionally on the side of the workers state. That is why Trotskyists stood 100% for the victory of the Soviet workers state against Nazi-ruled capitalist Germany during World War II. During the 1950-53 Korean War, genuine Trotskyists stood in solidarity with the North Korean workers state and her socialistic Chinese allies against the South Korean capitalist regime and it’s U.S., Australian and other imperialist allies. Today, if a war were to break out between the Chinese workers state and the imperialist-backed Taiwanese capitalist state, the working class must stand completely on the side of socialistic China. This will be the case regardless of how the conflict begins.
A second type of war is one between an imperialist country and a weaker capitalist country subjugated by imperialism. Lenin outlined the position that revolutionary Marxists should take in such a conflict in his crucial 1915 work Socialism and War (note that this was written before the 1917 Russian Revolution so that is when Russia was still an imperialist state):
“ … if tomorrow, Morocco were to declare war on France, India on England, Persia or China on Russia, and so forth, those would be `just,’ `defensive’ wars, irrespective of who attacked first; and every Socialist would sympathise with the victory of the oppressed, dependent, unequal states against the oppressing, slaveowning, predatory `great’ powers.”
That means we were, for example, for the defence of Iraq against U.S., British and Australian imperialism. If in future there was war between Iran and the U.S. and its allies, the Left and workers movement must stand for the victory of Iran, in Lenin’s words, “irrespective of who attacked first.”
Another related type of war is one between an oppressed people fighting for the right to self-determination and the capitalist ruling class of the oppressor nation seeking to forcibly maintain the downtrodden people in their existing state. Leninists stand with the oppressed people seeking to defend their right to self-determination in any conflict with the oppressor state. Therefore, we stand by Palestinian resistance groups in any clashes with the Israeli military. It also meant that we stood with the Russian-speaking rebels in the Donbass region fighting for self-determination.
What happens, however, if another capitalist country intervenes into a conflict between an oppressed people fighting for self determination and the state oppressing them under the guise of supporting the oppressed people? Well, if that intervening regime is an imperialist power and it intervenes into a semi-colonial or otherwise dependent country, then the character of the conflict would change. The imperialist power by its nature would only be intervening to advance its predatory agenda. The question of self-determination of the oppressed nation would be subsumed by the more fundamental issue of imperialist subjugation of poorer countries. We would in this case stand for the defence of the dependent, weaker state being intervened into – and, yes, the one that is itself oppressing the people fighting for self-determination – against the imperialist power.
But what if the capitalist state intervening into a conflict between an oppressed people fighting for self determination and the capitalist state oppressing them is a non-imperialist state? An example of this would be, say if, in the future, Syria and/or Jordan were to send its forces to help the Palestinian people of the West Bank gain independence from Israel. Of course, capitalist regimes are not interested in such liberation. The history of Arab capitalist regimes has largely been one of assisting in the subjugation of the Palestinian people. The scenario we described above could only be possible in rare circumstances. One could be when an Arab capitalist regime is highly unpopular and in danger of being toppled and, thus, seeks to recover its authority by putting itself forward as the champion of the Arab national cause. If an Arab capitalist army did send its forces into Israel promising support for the Palestinian cause, Marxists would examine the particular circumstances before determining our line. We would not ourselves promote illusions in any capitalist regime by calling for such intervention but if it actually did occur we may well accept the intervention. This scenario has relevance for the Ukraine situation today. For if Putin had sent in the Russian troops into only the areas of the Donbass controlled by the separatist rebels or at most only into areas of the Donbass where the majority of people clearly wanted independence from Ukraine, it would have been correct for Marxists to cautiously accept such an intervention. For such an intervention would have had the effect of supporting a just struggle for self determination. However, today the Russia-Ukraine conflict has extended far beyond this scenario. The all out war between Ukraine and Russia has subsumed the issue of the right to self determination of the people of Donetsk and Luhansk.
As one can see from the above, unlike the Leninist position on class war which is always unconditional support to rebelling workers and poor peasants fighting against capitalist regimes and unconditional defence of workers states, the Leninist stance on wars over the right to self-determination has always been conditional on the broader context of the conflict. Importantly, we must oppose forces intent on bringing capitalist counterrevolution to portions of current workers states disguising their agenda as one of national self-determination. For example, there was a right-wing, anti-secular terrorist movement, thankfully now largely defeated, operating in China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. That movement called for the formation of an independent country for ethnic Uyghurs in that region as a means to pull that part of China into an extreme, religious fundamentalist form of capitalist rule. We Trotskyists are 100% opposed to that movement.
On the issue of separatism we once again see the blatant hypocrisy of the imperialists. They denounced Russia for its support for the forces in Donetsk and Luhansk seeking independence from Ukraine. Yet with large amounts of money, training and propaganda support, the U.S. and other imperialist regimes have supported forces in Xinjiang, Tibet and Hong Kong demanding independence from China. These movements only demanded independence from the Chinese workers state as a means to overthrow socialistic rule in their regions. That is why the imperialists supported these particular separatists. For the imperial powers, the issue of whether to support separatist movements or not is completely subordinate to their drives to protect their domination of the world and destroy workers states. In the diametric opposite way, we Leninists, while strongly supporting the right of oppressed nations to self determination, subordinate the question of self-determination to the overall struggle against capitalism and the need to defend existing workers states.
A fourth type of war is a war between rival imperialist powers in competition for spheres of exploitation. World War I was such an inter-imperialist slaughter. So was that component of World War II in which U.S., British and French imperialism eventually fought with their Germany imperialist rivals and when U.S. and Australian imperialism fought with Japanese imperialism (the biggest conflict during World War II however was a class war between the Soviet workers state and Nazi Germany and there was also a massive national liberation war fought by the leftist-led Chinese and Korean peoples against Japanese imperialism). In inter-imperialist wars, communists on all sides insist: the main enemy is at home. That means Leninists in each country mobilise the working class against the capitalist rulers and war effort of first and foremost their own imperialist country. Our end goal is to put an end to the imperialist war through socialist revolutions in each of the belligerent countries. We take an identical revolutionary-defeatist position too on a fifth type of war: that is a war between non-imperialist, capitalist states of broadly similar levels of economic strength. The squalid 1980s Iran-Iraq War is an example of this latter type of war.
Capitalism in Russia and Ukraine since the Destruction of the Soviet Union
As you can see from the above exposition of the Leninist position on wars, our stance on any war is not dependent on which side fires the first shot. We Marxists understand that wars arise when tensions between competing classes, social forces and states reach such a point that violent conflict becomes inevitable. Therefore, the particular trigger for the conflict or which side appears to be the “aggressor” is of little significance. Rather, Leninists base our position on the competing classes, social forces and states underlying the conflict. We do so from the premise that the sole path to both lasting peace and the liberation of the exploited is socialist revolution and any war policy taken must help advance towards that goal.
So what then are the competing social forces underlying the war between Ukraine and Russia and which of the type of wars that we have discussed above is today’s war in Ukraine most like? To answer this question we need to explore what type of capitalist countries are both contemporary Russia and Ukraine. Before the October 1917 socialist revolution, Russia was not only a capitalist country but an imperialist one. Yet Russia was then the most economically backward of the imperialist countries. She relied on her huge army to make it into the ranks of the imperial powers. In particular, the Tsarist regime acted as the enforcers guarding the interests of British and French capital invested via Russia into the Middle East, East Europe and the Caucasus. For playing this henchman role, the Russian capitalists were awarded with a slice of the super-profits exploited out of the masses of Russia’s neighbouring region and beyond. But the 1917 revolution put an end to this imperialism by smashing Russian capitalism. Through socialistic rule, the whole of the USSR, including both Russia and Ukraine, became an industrial and military power. However, capitalism was restored to both Russia and Ukraine in 1991-92. Nearly seventy five years of socialistic rule meant that the new capitalist Russia emerged stronger relative to the Western imperialists than she had been in Tsarist times. Therefore, the new Russian capitalist ruling class had high hopes that Russia would again become one of the world’s imperial powers. However, the restoration of capitalism led to a gigantic economic collapse throughout most of the former USSR. By 1995, Russia’s per capita GDP had plummeted more than 30% from what it had been five years earlier in Soviet times! Russia was reduced to a subordinate status to Western imperialism. Capitalist Russia’s imperial ambitions had a second problem. Spheres of exploitation within the developing world had already been divided up amongst the existing imperialist powers. There was no room for another capitalist regime to break into the game. The existing powers did their best to constrain Russia’s rise. Not one of them was willing to commit to being a reliable ally of ambitious Russian capitalism that would provide the capital required such that Russia could leverage its military power to gain a serious share of imperialist loot. The arrangement in the Tsarist times could not be simply re-created eight decades later. The Russian ruling class had a third problem. The system of socialist central planning during the Soviet days had enabled the non-Russian parts of the Soviet Union – that in pre-Soviet times had been so looted by Russian imperialism – to catch up in economy and development with that of the Russian part of the USSR. That meant that post-Soviet Russia’s capitalist ruling class could not plunder the non-Russian peoples of the former Soviet Union the way that their class ancestors in Tsarist Russia had.
As the 21st century progressed, there were important changes in the environment that Russian capitalism faced. For one, capitalist restoration hit even harder the poorer parts of the former USSR than it hit Russia. For example, per capita income in Tajikistan that in the last period of the Soviet Union was one-third that of Soviet Russia, is today just one-eighth that of Russia. This meant that Russian capital now had greater opportunities to throw around its weight in the region. Moreover, surging energy prices filled the bank accounts of Russian tycoons. Russian oligarchs splashed their capital around the world and did now make some of their income from the export of capital.
So does all this make Russia now an imperialist country or is she still a semi-dependent capitalist country that she was in the nineties? In reality, Russia is somewhere in between a dependent capitalist country and an imperialist one with some features of both. Why that matters is in what attitude one should take to a potential conflict between Russia and a fully fledged imperialist power. If Russia were to be considered an imperialist country, then Leninist principles, reflecting the interests of the class struggle, mandate that socialists must oppose both sides in any conflict between the Western imperialists and Russia regardless of the particular circumstances in which the conflict arises. On the other hand, if Russia were to be considered a country dependent on and bullied by imperialism, then the interests of the working class stand in defending Russia against the Western imperialists in any conflict regardless of the context in which the war arises. Given, however, that capitalist Russia is somewhere intermediate between a dependent country and an imperialist power, our stance in the event of a war between Russia and the fully fledged imperialist powers actually does depend on the context in which the conflict arises. For example, if a conflict between a Western imperialist power and Russia were to take place around Libya where various capitalist powers – including the U.S., France, Italy and Russia – are today engaged in multi-sided proxy wars, full of shifting alliances, aimed at grabbing for themselves control over Libya’s massive oil wealth, the international workers movement would have no side in that conflict. We would be defeatist on all sides. However, should a war between Russia and one or many of the Western imperialist powers take place within Russia, or its neighbouring region, this conflict would likely then have a very different character. For example, if the NATO powers were to directly intervene into the current Ukraine war, that would transform the character of this war. Regardless of how the conflict initially began, the war from the point of view of the Western imperialists would become one aimed at expanding the power and reach of NATO, deepening the economic subordination of Russia and sending a message to the world that anyone who dares defy Western imperialism will be mercilessly smashed. In that case, socialists must stand for the defence of Russia. However, the current conflict is not one of Western imperialism versus Russia. It is a war between Ukraine backed by the Western powers and Russia.
Could it be then argued that in this case Russia is the predatory imperialist power seeking to exploit the people of Ukraine? The answer is no! To see why, it is important to note that even before the 2014 Euromaidan coup, when the Ukrainian economy was closely integrated with Russia’s, Ukraine was not, in a sizable way, the victim of Russian imperialist exploitation. To be sure, Russian billionaires did invest in Ukraine and make big profits there. However, there was no sign of Russian capitalism arm-twisting Ukraine into undertaking economic reforms that would enable Russian capital to take over her economy. Nor was there the pressure of Russian capital forcing Ukraine to change the structure of her economy to provide goods for Russia at substandard prices. And Russia did not push Ukraine to accept gas and other goods from Russia at inflated prices. Today, Ukraine is not fighting this war to either free itself from exploitation by Russian capital or to avert the threat of such exploitation from Russia in the future.
It should be noted that although capitalist counterrevolution has caused terrible economic devastation to Ukraine, certain gains from the socialistic era take a long time to erode. Although her people’s living standards are now low by world standards, Ukraine continues to have a technically literate and highly skilled workforce and retains some of her high-tech manufacturing industries from Soviet days. What this means is that overseas capital from the likes of Russia is not able to use the necessity of providing technical expertise as a means to demand a high rate of return from investments in Ukraine. That is why no capitalist power – not even the Western imperialists – is able to exploit Ukraine with the same ferocity that they exploit their neo-colonies and semi-colonies in the so-called “Third World”. Most of Ukraine’s biggest companies and key industries remain owned by local Ukrainian capitalists – usually billionaire oligarchs – rather than overseas capitalists. Nevertheless, the Western powers have made Ukraine militarily and economically dependent on them and have been dictating to Ukraine in a high-handed, paternalistic manner. They have done so by turning on and off the tap to something that they have a lot more of than Russia, loads of capital. In classic imperialist fashion, the Western powers, via the IMF that they dominate, have been using the threat of cutting off Ukraine’s access to their capital as a means to blackmail her into instituting neoliberal economic reforms – like land privatisation. Thus, to the extent that Ukraine is under imperialist subjugation it is from the likes of Germany, the U.S., Italy and France. Yet that is not who Ukraine’s regime is fighting a war against! Rather, the Ukrainian regime is fighting a war with Russia precisely in order to maintain its relationship with Western imperialism. That is why this Ukraine-Russia war cannot be seen as an anti-imperialist war on the part of Ukraine. Rather, this Ukraine-Russia war is a squalid war between two capitalist countries whose levels of development are of roughly the same order of magnitude. Such a war is one in which the working class of each country and the world have no side.
Ukrainian and Russian Workers: Unite to Wage Class War against Each of Your Capitalist Rulers!
The character of the Ukraine-Russia war will be clearer if we examine what each side is fighting for. The imperialist-dependent Ukrainian regime wants to join NATO. It also wants to maintain an economy integrated with the EU despite being subjected to a subordinate position within its relationship with the EU. Furthermore, the Ukrainian regime wants to forcibly and brutally cling on to all of the Donbass, despite the majority of people in a sizeable portion of that region wanting independence from Ukraine. That is hardly surprising. What drives capitalist ruling classes is maximising profits. And having control of the markets and natural resources in as large a territory as possible gives them the greatest opportunity to maximise profits.
For the very same reason, the regime serving the Russian capitalist class wants to maximise the territory under its control – whether that be through a Donbass that in the future accedes to Russia or an independent one that is very much dependent on and aligned with Russia. In pursuing this goal, the Russian regime will in the process be liberating from national/cultural-linguistic oppression those people in the Donbass who were facing brutal persecution by the Ukrainian regime. At the same time however, Moscow seeks territory extending into areas where the majority of people do not want independence from Ukraine – including into particular areas of the region where the overwhelming majority of the population are ethnic Ukrainians. In those latter areas, should the Russian operation achieve its goals, it will then be these ethnic Ukrainians who will have their right to self-determination violated. Meanwhile, another key aim of Moscow is to stop the threatening expansion of NATO onto its borders.
Lastly, the Russian capitalist class hopes to restore their level of access and penetration of the Ukrainian market to at least the level that existed before the 2014 Euromaidan coup and preferably well beyond that level. Success on this score would not be at the expense of the Ukrainian people but at the expense of Germany, other EU powers and the U.S. who have all gained a much greater share of the Ukrainian market over the last eight years. To a partial degree then, this war is the continuation of the conflicts within Ukraine since the start of this century over whether Ukraine should link her economy and security with the West or with Russia. The U.S.-led Western regimes intervened into this dispute with huge amounts of covert political funding, NGOs, propaganda, training of unarmed and armed proxies and arming of far-right paramilitaries like the Azov Brigade. Without the same financial resources as the West, lacking the level of sophistication in propaganda campaigns and without the same level of experience in the skillful use of NGOs as proxies, Russia is now responding to that earlier Western interference with military power.
That this dispute over who Ukraine will align her economy and defence with has now reached such a severity that it has contributed to an outright war shows just how desperate all of the sides have now become in the context of faltering capitalism. We oppose the efforts of Western imperialism to subordinate the peoples of Ukraine and Russia but in the greedy capitalist competition between the Western powers and Russia over who will dominate trade with Ukraine, the working class actually do not have a side – just like we do not have a side in the war that has ensued in some part because of this squabble.
Meanwhile, part of what fueled the drive to war, is that both the Ukrainian and Russian regimes have been increasingly unpopular at home and hence desperately in need of a nationalist diversion. In Ukraine there has been widespread anger with the government at persistently high unemployment, rampant corruption, falling living standards and a response to the pandemic so calamitous and so indifferent to people’s lives that wellover a hundred thousand Ukrainians have died from COVID – hundreds of times more than the current civilian death toll from this current war. As a result, by January last year, the pro-Russia successor party to Yanukovych’s Party of Regions, called Opposition Platform — For Life, was actually leading opinion polls for Ukraine’s parliamentary elections. The Ukrainian regime responded with repression. In February last year, they imposed economic sanctions on a leading Opposition Platform — For Life politician and businessman, Viktor Medvedchuk, as well as other members of his party. Later Medvedchuk was placed under house arrest. Meanwhile, Zelensky consciously whipped up anti-Russian nationalism. Ukrainian troops became increasingly aggressive in the Donbass. Then, last June, Zelensky ratcheted up tensions with Moscow by imposing severe economic sanctions on Russian companies. Later, after Moscow responded with a military build-up along the Ukrainian border, the Ukrainian government – egged on by Washington – engaged in dangerous brinkmanship with Russia as a diversion from their economic and pandemic-response failures. For its part, Russia’s capitalist regime has been on the receiving end of the people’s ongoing anger over Moscow’s 2019 pension reform, a measure which greatly increased the age at which Russian people can receive pensions. Then Russia’s pandemic response ended up as disastrous as Ukraine’s. Meanwhile, especially as inflation has been soaring, there is fury at the continued massive inequality within Russia which has one of the world’s greatest levels of wealth disparity amongst large countries alongside Brazil, the U.S. and India. As a result, there has been a surge in support for far-left groups. Putin’s escalation of tensions with Ukraine and the national chauvinist upsurge that he knew would inevitably accompany it is in part aimed at refurbishing the authority of the Russian ruling class.
In summary, rival unpopular regimes whipping up rabid nationalism to ensure their own survival and prosecuting conflicting predatory claims issued by the needs of their decaying capitalist systems – mixed with the U.S. provoking Russia and pressuring the Kiev regime into a more extreme anti-Russia stance – have driven Ukraine and Russia into a disastrous war. What the working classes of Ukraine and Russia must now do is unite to oppose the war campaign of each of their respective rulers. Let’s turn this inter-capitalist war into a class war by the working class of Ukraine against the Ukrainian ruling class and by the Russian working class against Russia’s capitalist rulers! Where Russian troops and Ukrainian regular soldiers – and not the far-right paramilitary groups allied with them – are meant to be engaged in battles, there should be fraternisation between the troops in order to organise to turn the guns the other way against their own respective rulers.
For communists in each of Ukraine and Russia there are some special tasks particular to the work in each of their countries. Communists in Ukraine must make clear that they recognise the right to independence of Russian-majority areas of Donetsk and Luhansk. They must also stir up opposition to the Kiev regime’s declaration of martial law and opposition to the regime’s ban on adult males under sixty leaving the country. Meanwhile, with authorities in Ukraine handing out guns to civilians, communists should seize the opportunity to get themselves armed. Working together with trusted, non-communist class-conscious workers, they should form armed, anti-racist militias to defend minority populations like Roma, Jews, Tartars, Russians, Belarussians and Greeks that are being threatened by fascist Ukrainian paramilitary groups. Meanwhile, revolutionary socialists should take advantage of the disruption of Ukrainian state power resulting from this war. For example, where there are concentrations of politically conscious workers – and there are large numbers of pro-Soviet workers in especially Eastern Ukraine who are sympathetic to socialism and believe in social ownership of industry – and where Ukrainian state forces are especially distracted by the war with Russia, like right now in Kharkiv, Ukrainian socialists should organise workers to confiscate particular factories, warehouses and mines from their capitalist owners and transfer them into collective ownership of workers and the neighbouring community. Large mansions of the ultra-rich should be seized and used to house the homeless and those whose homes have been destroyed in the fighting. Meanwhile, when fascist paramilitaries are pre-occupied with looking out for Russian troops at their front, leftist militias should take the chance to strike blows against these fascists from the rear.
For their part, Russian communists must oppose discrimination against Roma, Ukrainians and Jews in the Donbass areas currently occupied by pro-Russian separatists or Russian forces. They must also insist that in these areas, Ukrainian has the status as one of the official languages. Those Russian leftists located within these Donbass territories should mobilise joint action with politically aware workers and other anti-racists to drive out fascists from Russia and abroad who have come to the Donbass to fight with the pro-Russian forces. Meanwhile, Russian communists must denounce Putin’s 21 February speech where he, in effect, denied the right to statehood of the Ukrainian people. Russian workers must today make clear that should the regime that rules over them win an all out military victory over Ukraine and in the, perhaps unlikely, event that it then decides to occupy or annex all of, or a large part of, Ukraine, then they the Russian toilers will then support any struggle of Ukrainian people for independence from Russia in any areas of present-day Ukraine where the majority want Ukrainian statehood – provided that such a struggle does not end up subordinate to Western imperialist interests. However, for pro-communist workers in Russia to take such a position requires political firmness. A weakness of the Russian Far Left over these last three decades, even of many of the best tendencies – that is the ones to the left of the misnamed, Russian nationalist, Communist Party of the Russian Federation (CPRF) – is that they have failed to clearly insist on the right to self determination of the non-Russian peoples of the former USSR. Instead, they have adhered to Russian patriotism. In part this is a bending to Russian nationalist moods amongst the masses. However, it also comes from not coming to terms with the fact that the Soviet Union no longer exists. In Soviet times, patriotism to the state – that is to the Soviet Union – was progressive, since the Soviet Union was a workers state. However, now Russia is capitalist. That means that patriotism to the Russian state is reactionary. Similarly, during the last period of Soviet times, separatist demands made by some Ukrainians was usually disingenuous. It was a demand made by those who wanted a separate Ukrainian country only so that they could break away from the Soviet workers state in order to restore capitalism. However, today, Ukrainian people’s wish to be in their own country independent of Russia, which is itself capitalist, has a different basis. To be sure, there remains a strong strain in Ukrainian nationalism that, following on from the capitalist counterrevolutionaries who in the last days of the Soviet Union spearheaded Ukrainian separatism, is celebratory of the Nazi-collaborating Stepan Bandera tradition and based on fierce anticommunist hatred of the socialistic USSR and its “friendship of peoples” motto. Yet there is also another strain of Ukrainian people’s wish to live in their own state that is based on legitimate fear that they will again be subjugated as second class citizens by Russians as they were in pre-Soviet Russia. This experience remains very much in her people’s collective consciousness, including through oral accounts passed on from generation to generation. The greater part of Russia’s communists have thus far failed to accept this second, very legitimate basis for Ukrainian people’s wish for national self-determination. Russian communists must rediscover the fierce opposition to Great Russian chauvinism of the Bolsheviks and especially it’s relentlessly internationalist leader, Vladimir Lenin. Here is what Lenin had to say about the Ukrainian people in Tsarist Russia:
“Accursed tsarism made the Great Russians executioners of the Ukrainian people, and fomented in them [the Ukrainian people] a hatred for those who even forbade Ukrainian children to speak and study in their native tongue.
“Russia’s revolutionary democrats, if they want to be truly revolutionary and truly democratic, must break with that past, must regain for themselves, for the workers and peasants of Russia, the brotherly trust of the Ukrainian workers and peasants. This cannot be done without full recognition of the Ukraine’s rights, including the right to free secession.”
At the same time, in opposing their own capitalist rulers, Russian leftists must be very careful not to, even in the slightest way, align themselves with the wing of the Russian capitalist class, represented by Alexei Navalny, who are opposing this war only because they believe in cosying up to the Western imperialists. This wing of the capitalist class is typified by the greedy billionaires, Vagit Alekperov and Leonid Fedun, that own the bulk of Russian oil giant Lukoil and who have come out against the war. Russian socialists must not participate in any joint protests with Navalny supporters and other pro-imperialist opponents of the war. Any actions that they take against the war campaign of their own rulers must be clearly formulated on a pro-working class agenda. And to keep out pro-imperialists, they should ensure that the slogan of “Down with NATO” is a very prominent part of their slogans for any actions that they mobilise.
The above matters are important considerations for socialists in Russia and Ukraine. However, for partisans of the working class and oppressed in Australia our tasks are in a sense simpler and more obvious. Living in an imperialist country and under a regime that is a junior partner of the world’s sole imperialist superpower, any intervention by the Australian regime abroad will necessarily be predatory and against the interests of the toiling classes of Australia and the world. Therefore, we must oppose every single intervention that Australian imperialism makes into any crisis abroad whether that be a military, political or diplomatic intervention. We do that in a proudly “knee-jerk” – that is, principled – manner. Today that means we must oppose the aggressive interference of Australian imperialism and its Western allies in the Ukraine-Russia war and resist their efforts to use this conflict to justify increased militarism at home and further escalation of their Cold War drive against socialistic China.
Is There a Case for Supporting Russia in This Present War?
There are a very small number of leftists in the West who believe that Russia should be outright supported in this war as distinct from our position of opposition to both Ukraine and Russia combined with staunch opposition to all forms of Western imperialist intervention into this conflict. Given that these leftists are standing diametrically opposite to the position taken by their own rulers, their arguments should be taken seriously. However, it needs to be explained why their stance is nevertheless mistaken.
One of the arguments raised by those socialists that support Russia is that the Russian intervention will, in Putin’s words, “de-Nazify Ukraine” – referring to the presence of Stepan Bandera-admiring right-wing extremists within parts of the Ukrainian state machinery and the prominent role played by fascist paramilitaries. Given that the Ukrainian fascists are extreme anti-Russian chauvinists in addition to being white supremacists, then the Russian advance is indeed likely to deal a blow to these forces. However, it is almost certain that the fascists that have flocked from Russia and some Western countries to support the pro-Russia Donbass separatists will not be suppressed. Meanwhile, promises by Putin to “de-Nazify Ukraine” ring hollow given that the Russian regime has itself allowed fascists to operate within Russia and make their way into the upper echelons of the state apparatus. Fascist ideologues like Aleksandr Dugin even became key advisers to leading Russian government officials. To be sure, most such fascists are not neo-Nazis in that they do not claim to be replicating the agenda of Hitler’s Nazis. Given that Russia was invaded by the Nazis during World War II and given that Hitler’s forces committed such horrific crimes against the peoples of the Soviet Union, any viable Russian fascist movement will not claim the tradition of the Nazis. Rather, they will like Dugin, represent a specifically Russian and Slavic form of extreme reactionary nationalism. Yet this does not make them any less destructive to the workers movement and minorities. Since capitalist counterrevolution, Russian fascists have murdered literally hundreds of immigrants, Roma, people with backgrounds from the Caucuses and Central Asia, gay people and anti-fascists. You can bet that these fascists are being emboldened by Russia’s military advances and will be swept up still further by the nationalist wave that will sweep the country should Russia win the war.
Secondly, although the Russian operation will land blows against the likes of the Azov in areas where it advances, Russian intervention into majority ethnic Ukrainian areas will surely breed sympathy for Ukrainian fascists. Capitalist forces like the Russian state cannot crush fascism because fascist forces are themselves a product of decaying capitalism – especially when that capitalism is in a particularly crisis-ridden condition. When fascists becomes a powerful movement, they consist of self-employed business owners, other sections of the middle class and a portion of the desperate unemployed population mobilised in extreme hostility to the workers movement, the Left and minorities. During a time of economic crisis, in the absence of the working class making a viable struggle to take power, the fascist forces can completely crush the workers movement and Left and institute the fascist form of capitalist rule. That is what occurred in Mussolini’s Italy and Hitler’s Germany. Ukraine has not been under this form of capitalist rule but fascists are present in sizeable numbers within the Ukrainian military, courts and police.
Now some could argue that: Did not the Allied forces de-Nazify the Western part of Germany at the end of World War II, even though they were capitalist forces? The truth is that these forces did not de-Nazify Germany. Sure, they did replace the fascist form of capitalism in the Western part of Germany with the parliamentary “democratic” form. This was because they knew that thoroughly discredited German capitalism could only survive if it made this transformation. However, unlike the Soviet-liberated East of Germany, the Allies only purged the very top echelons of the German state apparatus of Nazis. Within most of the remainder of the West German judiciary, police and military, the same officials that administered the horrors of Nazi rule were now allowed to administer “democratic” West German capitalism. Meanwhile, the Allies spirited away fascists from Central and Eastern Europe – including from the Ukraine – considered crucial to the fight against communism to sanctuary in the U.S., Australia, South America and Canada. The Allies can hardly be considered to have carried out a de-Nazification! In many ways post-war West Germany ended up like the Ukraine was at the outbreak of this war, a nominal parliamentary democracy but with a fair portion of their state apparatus infested by Nazis, albeit in Germany’s case mostly nominal “ex”-Nazis now claiming to be “democrats.” Let’s not forget that this supposedly “democratic” German state carried out fierce repression of the Left and banned the Communist Party of Germany outright in 1956. It is true that overall West Germany probably ended up with more of the trappings of a parliamentary capitalist “democracy” than today’s Ukraine, which is even more authoritarian. But that is only because massive amounts of U.S. Marshall Plan aid – aimed at heading off the strong support for communism that existed throughout Europe – allowed the Allies and the German capitalist class the opportunity to buy greater social stability within Germany. However, should Russia win this war, Moscow simply does not have the financial resources to do the same to Ukraine today even if it wanted to. A post Russian victory in Ukraine will less resemble post World War II West Germany than it will post World War I Germany, where Germany’s humiliation in World War I and the injustices – and perceived injustices – of the post World War I Versailles Treaty upon Germany generated huge resentment within the German people that fueled the rise of the Nazis.
It is only a socialist revolution or the intervention of a socialistic state that can “de-Nazify” a country. This is what the Soviet Union did to Eastern Europe and the Eastern part of Germany following World War II. However, capitalist Russia is not the Soviet Union and the army of capitalist Russia is not the heroic Soviet Red Army.
The second argument raised by leftists who support Russia in this war is that Western support for Ukraine has effectively turned this war into a war between the Western imperialists and Russia. The imperial powers certainly are giving lots of assistance to Ukraine. However, it is not at a level where one can say that the U.S., British, German and Australian regimes are effectively at war with Russia. To see more clearly why, we should compare this war with another war, the post-2011 Syrian War. In that case the U.S. and its allies intervened to a degree that it can be fully said that they were waging a proxy war against Syria. From 2012 to 2017, the U.S. directly, and through its allies in Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, gave billions of dollars of weapons to anti-government “Rebels” in Syria – including to ISIS. Britain and France joined in with their own support. Meanwhile, the CIA directly trained the “Rebels” along the Turkish-Syria border, Jordan and Qatar. This was supplemented by training operations run by Turkey and other U.S. allies. U.S. and British special forces also directly took part in operations against the Syrian Army. On 20 July 2017, the Washington Post reported that: “One [American] knowledgeable official estimates that the CIA-backed fighters may have killed or wounded 100,000 Syrian soldiers and their allies over the past four years”! Even after the West turned its focus against their former ISIS proxies in late 2014, they still targeted Syria. Several Western airstrikes in the campaign nominally directed against ISIS hit the Syrian Army and Syrian government infrastructure like oil installations. Meanwhile, although the NATO powers did strike ISIS targets, they mostly simply herded the ISIS forces away from their Kurdish and other “Rebel” allies and towards Syrian government targets. Then in 2017, the U.S. launched a massive missile strike on Syria. For their part, Washington’s Israeli allies have launched hundreds of air strikes on Syria over the years. This was fully a proxy war, in that the viability of the Syrian “Rebels” depended entirely on support from the Western powers and their allies. Given the much weaker strength of the Syrian military relative to Russia’s, the Western intervention was of a scale sufficient to mean that the prospect of the “Rebels” winning the war and over-running the Syrian capital was real. In contrast, while Western military support to Ukraine is large, relative to the awesome power of the Russian military it is nothing like the scale that would allow Ukraine to win her war with Russia and see Ukrainian forces storming in to take the centre of Moscow. The West’s aid to Ukraine is not at a level aimed at achieving total Ukrainian victory but rather at bleeding Russia over a long period. Thus, much of the weaponry that the Western imperialists have supplied to Ukraine, like hand-held missiles and rockets, is most suitable for a guerilla war against Russia. It is, of course, possible that the West could qualitatively change their level of assistance. One reason that they have not thus far is that, unlike Syria, Russia has the capacity to strike the Western powers – not just in the Ukraine but in the U.S., Britain, Australia and Germany’s own territories – should she deem that Western support to Ukraine has reached such a level that the West is directly at war with Russia. Currently therefore, we cannot say that the large amounts of Western support to Ukraine is equivalent to the U.S., NATO and Australia being directly at war with Russia.
The third – and at first glance most compelling – argument for why Russia should be outright supported in this war is the notion that a Russian victory would be a blow against imperialism. In one sense it will indeed be. Given that the Western imperialists are clearly backing Ukraine in this war, a defeat for the imperialists’ Ukraine ally may encourage others to defy the imperialists. Some of the people in Asia, Africa, the Pacific, the Middle East and South and Central America who are being so cruelly subjugated by various Western neo-colonial powers will take heart that Western imperialism has had a setback and that the side that it so clearly backed in this war has been defeated. It would also be a blow to the morale of the Western imperialists and bring a degree of self-doubt and loss of confidence to their own ranks. However, unlike the case where the imperialists are directly involved in the war, this would not have the same impact in terms of deterring future imperialist military actions. A Russian victory in this war would not have the same impact as, say, the humiliating defeat that the U.S., NATO and Australian regimes suffered in Afghanistan. That is why it really does matter that the Western imperialists are not, at this stage, directly participating in this war. Moreover, in the event of a Russian military victory, given that it will mean that their ally has been defeated by an invading force of a major military power, the imperialists will seize on it to whip up a national security obsession and a massive arms build up. This especially matters because this reactionary consequence of a Russian victory will not be countered by any inspirational effect of that victory upon active workers and leftists within the imperialist centres. This will be then be very different to the impact of the Vietnam War when communist-led Vietnamese revolutionaries defeated U.S. and Australian imperialism. That struggle greatly energised working class and leftist struggles worldwide and prevented the rulers of the defeated imperialist countries from using the defeat to stir up increased militarism.
To get a strong sense of how a Russian victory would affect the political climate, we merely need to observe the political winds over the last two weeks. Far from the working class masses and leftists being energised by the Russian advance, it is the imperialist regimes that have been filled with renewed confidence, including here in Australia. They have used the Russian intervention to divert attention from falling living standards at home, incite militarism, cynically paint themselves on the world stage as the defenders of weaker countries and “justify” ramping up still further their campaign against their main target: Russia’s friendly partner, the PRC. The German ruling class have used the war to justify radically increasing the country’s defence budget. Washington has, meanwhile, been skillfully getting the leaders of Eastern European regimes to “request” increased American troop deployments in their own countries. All this is, after all, why Washington provoked the Russian invasion in the first place. If Russia ends up winning the war, all these political winds will blow still stronger.
Overall, should Russia win the war, there will be some negative consequences and some positive ones for workers movements and leftist forces around the world. What is clear is that there will be no clear-cut raising of the consciousness of the working class should Russia win the war. And it is the working class of the world – and not emerging capitalist powers – that is the force that alone can smash imperialism.
Although the effect of a potential Russian victory on the position of the working class in the imperialist centres is somewhat ambiguous, the impact of such an outcome on Russia is very clear cut. It will strengthen the capitalist regime, electrify Great Russian chauvinism and embolden far-right forces. Ominously, during Putin’s crucial 21 February speech, he threw his support behind the Ukrainian regime’s “decommunisation” policy involving the persecution of communists and the banning of communist parties. Should capitalist Russia’s forces win the war, expect Putin to go after the Left, especially targeting those tendencies that are more internationalist and closer to being authentically communist than the patriotic CPRF.
This War is the Result of Capitalist Counterrevolution in the Former Soviet Union
Our insistence that it is capitalism that breeds war is proven by one very obvious fact: this Ukraine-Russia war would not be occurring if it was the working class that ruled Russia and Ukraine – as in the days of the former Soviet Union. The Soviet workers state was created by the 1917 socialist revolution led by the Bolsheviks. Key to the Bolsheviks success was their intransigent defence of the rights of all the minority nationalities oppressed under the Tsarist Empire. It was only in this way that they were able to unite the workers and poor peasants of the whole country. The Bolsheviks’ Central Committee that led the party’s work during the Revolution was itself disproportionately made up from the country’s minorities, including Ukrainians. Even after the Revolution, Lenin and Trotsky’s Bolsheviks took great pains to insist on the national rights of peoples who had been downtrodden in Tsarist times by the “Great Russians” (as ethnic Russians were then formally referred to): This was typified in a 1919 letter that Lenin wrote when the young workers state was in the midst of a Civil War against the overthrown capitalists trying to recapture power under the leadership of former Tsarist generals like Anton Denikin:
“… The independence of the Ukraine has been recognised both by the All-Russia Central Executive Committee of the R.S.F.S.R. (Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic) and by the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks). It is therefore self-evident and generally recognised that only the Ukrainian workers and peasants themselves can and will decide at their All-Ukraine Congress of Soviets whether the Ukraine shall amalgamate with Russia, or whether she shall remain a separate and independent republic, and, in the latter case, what federal ties shall be established between that republic and Russia.
“How should this question be decided insofar as concerns the interests of the working people and the promotion of their fight for the complete emancipation of labour from the yoke of capital?
“In the first place, the interests of labour demand the fullest confidence and the closest alliance among the working people of different countries and nations. The supporters of the landowners and capitalists, of the bourgeoisie, strive to disunite the workers, to intensify national discord and enmity, in order to weaken the workers and strengthen the power of capital….
“Secondly, the working people must not forget that capitalism has divided nations into a small number of oppressor, Great-Power (imperialist), sovereign and privileged nations and an overwhelming majority of oppressed, dependent and semi-dependent, non-sovereign nations. The arch-criminal and arch-reactionary war of 1914-18 still further accentuated this division and as a result aggravated rancour and hatred. For centuries the indignation and distrust of the non-sovereign and dependent nations towards the dominant and oppressor nations have been accumulating, of nations such as the Ukrainian towards nations such as the Great-Russian….
“Experience has shown that this distrust wears off and disappears only very slowly, and that the more caution and patience displayed by the Great Russians, who have for so long been an oppressor nation, the more certainly this distrust will pass….
“If a Great-Russian Communist insists upon the amalgamation of the Ukraine with Russia, Ukrainians might easily suspect him of advocating this policy not from the motive of uniting the proletarians in the fight against capital, but because of the prejudices of the old Great-Russian nationalism, of imperialism. Such mistrust is natural, and to a certain degree inevitable and legitimate, because the Great Russians, under the yoke of the landowners and capitalists, had for centuries imbibed the shameful and disgusting prejudices of Great-Russian chauvinism….
“Consequently, we Great-Russian Communists must repress with the utmost severity the slightest manifestation in our midst of Great-Russian nationalism, for such manifestations, which are a betrayal of communism in general, cause the gravest harm by dividing us from our Ukrainian comrades and thus playing into the hands of Denikin and his regime….“
V.I.Lenin, Letter to the Workers and Peasants of the Ukraine, 28 December 1919, Lenin’s Collected Works, 4th English Edition, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1965, Volume 30, pages 291-297
Since it was based on socialist, collective ownership of the means of production, the Soviet economic system naturally brought people together, including people of different ethnicities. Meanwhile, Ukrainian literature and culture like that of many other minority peoples was promoted and flourished during the first fifteen years of the Soviet workers state in a way that was completely unheard of in the capitalist times. The use of Ukrainian language and its teaching in school was massively expanded within the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic of the Soviet federation. However, the young Soviet workers state also faced immense challenges. The defeats of the revolutions that she inspired abroad left the workers state isolated and besieged by imperialism. Under these pressures, the Soviet workers state was pushed a big step backwards in the mid-1920s. The Soviet Union remained a workers state based on socialist property forms embodying terrific gains for the masses. But a more conservative, right-ward moving faction, representing the bureaucracy that emerged atop the workers state, took over the party and suppressed the workers democracy that had enlivened the first few years of the workers state. The new Soviet leadership slid backwards in many areas including on its attitude to minority peoples. Concessions were made to Great Russian chauvinism. Certain former Tsars and Tsarist military leaders were now portrayed favourably. In 1933, there was a partial roll back in the policy of enthusiastically developing Ukraine’s own distinct culture. For a period, from the mid-1930s to the mid-1940s, some nationalities were treated harshly by Stalin’s government in a way that echoed the Tsarist times. However, overall, the minority nationalities’ position improved greatly. The peoples who were poorest and most subjugated in Tsarist times, including the peoples of Soviet Central Asia, gained the most from the Russian Revolution.
Following the continued rapid advancement of the Soviet economy after World War II, the material basis for the repressive administration of the bureaucracy – that is scarcity – weakened. Consequently, in the mid-1950s, the Soviet Union’s bureaucratic rulers had to relax rigid controls. Along with this they righted most of the wrongs done to certain nationalities during the second half of Stalin’s reign. They also reversed the notion of Great Russians as the natural leader of the Soviet peoples pushed in that period. The culture of the minority nationalities of the socialistic USSR again flourished with renewed vigour along with the economic standard of living of their peoples. For the following three decades, the different ethnicities of the socialistic USSR lived in greater harmony and with more genuine friendship amongst her different peoples than in any other heavily multi-ethnic country in the world. To be sure, since the Soviet Union’s transition to full socialism could not be completed while the pressure of the richest countries in the world remaining capitalist continued to exist, racial and ethnic prejudices could not be completely eliminated. There remained a degree of Russian centredness within the Soviet Union. However, in no way can it be said that the minority nations of the USSR were exploited by the ethnic Russian nation as in pre-Soviet times. So much so that in 1990, just before the destruction of the Soviet Union, per capita income was not only higher in the Baltic republics of the USSR than in Soviet Russia but also higher than in Soviet Russia in the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic of the Soviet Union – a region that had been extremely poor in Tsarist times. Meanwhile, in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, per capita income was roughly the same as that in Soviet Russia (just 5% lower), while average life expectancy was nearly a year and a half higher than in Soviet Russia.
However, the closer that the Soviet Union came to catching up in economy with the richer of the capitalist countries, the more that the lack of workers democracy impeded the development of her planned economy. As a result and with her economy strained by trying to keep up with a massive U.S. military build up, the Soviet economy started to stagnate by the early 1980s. This stagnation and the combined effect of intense imperialist military, economic and political pressure led to the ascendancy of more rightist elements to the Soviet leadership in the mid-1980s. This new Soviet leadership, headed by Mikhail Gorbachev, embarked on market reforms to try and spur the economy. But these reforms increased income inequality. This encouraged pro-capitalist tendencies within sections of the most educated youth who believed that they would gain from capitalist restoration. This layer pushed for yet more right-wing economic reforms which increased inequality still further and that in turn further nourished the rise of pro-capitalist forces. The USSR was spiraling towards capitalist counterrevolution.
The emerging pro-capitalist forces espoused nationalism as a way to get broader layers of the population behind them. In the Ukraine, these counterrevolutionaries formed a Ukrainian Popular Front, called the Rukh, to call for Ukraine’s separation from the Soviet workers state as a means to achieve capitalist restoration. The Rukh is the spiritual father – and sometimes the actual source – of today’s pro-Western, Ukrainian nationalists. During the last days of the USSR, although the Rukh were able to point to a degree of Russian centredness within the Soviet system to gain support, their far more persuasive pitch was to point to growing Great Russian nationalism within Russia. One manifestation of this was the emergence of the extreme Great Russian chauvinist group, Pamyat. The rise of such Russian fascists naturally engendered fears amongst Ukrainians and other minority nationalities that they could again be subjugated by the Russians as in Tsarist times. The primary factor driving increased reactionary nationalism in the final period of the USSR was the increased inequality and competition between the different regions of the USSR spurred by Gorbachev’s market reforms, which allowed each republic to keep more of the wealth generated in its own area rather than be re-directed for the benefit of the whole USSR. This growing ethnic nationalism sparked by market reforms and by the increasing weight of pro-capitalist forces was a driving force for capitalist counterrevolution throughout the USSR. Nevertheless in March 1991 when a referendum was held on preservation or not of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, more than 71% of Ukrainians voted for maintaining the USSR, in an election with a voter turnout of 83% in the Ukraine.
Although a very small number of people became very rich out of the 1991-92 capitalist counterrevolution, it was a disaster for the overwhelming majority of people of the former USSR. This was true too for the people of Ukraine. Capitalist restoration led to economic collapse. To see how much this is the case we will compare the Ukraine with a country that remained under socialistic rule: China. In 1989, the year before Ukraine and the rest of the USSR started sliding rapidly towards capitalist counterrevolution, her average life expectancy was 70.5 years, one and a half years higher than in Red China. However by 2019, her life expectancy was five years lower than in China. Even more striking is a comparison of per capita income. In 1990, the average per capita income in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic was nearly eight times higher than in the PRC. However, by 2020, capitalist Ukraine’s per capita income was 25% lower than in socialistic China.
In order to divert the masses from the truth that they were now being exploited by a section of their own people, the new capitalist regimes that rose to power through destroying the socialistic USSR blamed other nations and ethnic groups for the devastation of living standards in their own countries and regions. In this way, they tore apart peoples who had for decades lived together in peace and friendship and re-ignited long dormant, ancient prejudices and grievances. Just like in the former Yugoslavia, which underwent capitalist counterrevolution around the same time, the drive to capitalist restoration and its aftermath sparked bloody ethnic and national conflicts in the former USSR. In wars in Armenia-Azerbaijan, Chechnya, the Transnistria region of Moldova and the South Ossetian and Abkhazia regions of Georgia, between 160,000 to 200,000 former Soviet residents were killed. In subsequent phases of most of these wars and in the 2008 Russia-Georgia War, a further 65,000 to 80,000 people were killed in total.
As all this conflict raged in their neighbouring region, the new capitalist leaders of the two biggest countries that emerged out of the Soviet Union, Russia and Ukraine, gradually pulled their people apart as they both pushed nationalism as a means to hold their societies together in the face of the hardships caused by capitalist restoration. And the more corrupt their rule and the more furious the masses grew at the fact that they were undergoing economic hardships while a few had become obscenely rich, the more that the capitalist rulers of Ukraine and Russia promoted aggressive national chauvinism and hostility to each others’ counntries. The aggressive nationalism of the official leaders in turned spawned the rise of far-right groups in both countries who in turn pushed for a still more confrontationist stand against each country’s rival nation. Throw in plenty of aggressive meddling, manipulation and provocation by Washington and now we have this disastrous war. “This is like what happened in the former Yugoslavia played out in slow motion”, stated with great sadness Yuri Gromov, editor of Trotskyist Platform, who was born in the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic of the USSR and like so many people from the former USSR is of mixed ethnic heritage – part Roma, part Jewish and part Ukrainian and Russian.
Given that the current war and the other deadly wars in the former USSR over the last three or so decades are the direct product of capitalist counterrevolution and the drive towards it, it is obvious what the solution is: the restoration of working class rule! Should the working class again come to power in some or all of the former Soviet countries, whether or not some or all of the new workers states choose to join together in a new version of the Soviet Union is a question for the masses of each country. However, that really is a secondary question. The main point is the need for new Great October Socialist Revolutions in the lands of the former USSR. However, to ensure that these new workers states do not again degenerate and crumble under hostile imperialist pressure, we must fight for socialist revolutions in the imperialist centres – that is in the likes of the U.S., Britain, Australia and Japan.
The Myth of a Clash Between “Democracy” and “Authoritarianism”
The biggest lie told by imperialist regimes about this current war is that this war is part of a broader “conflict between democracy and authoritarianism.” However, the Western “democratic” powers really have little commitment to “democracy” in even the very limited sense that they mean by the word. Washington and its allies back one of the most brutally authoritarian regimes in the world, Saudi Arabia, in its murderous war against the people of Yemen. What makes the way that they have framed the current conflict especially dishonest is that while the capitalist Putin regime is indeed “authoritarian”, the Kiev one that they are backing is even more so. Not only has the Ukrainian regime been murderously persecuting those seeking independence in the Donbass, it has jailed large numbers of pro-Russian and leftist opposition activists throughout the country. Opposition politicians, especially those expressing pro-Russia views, have been hit with bogus charges and arrested. As part of this repressive policy, the regime has not only enacted laws mandating the firing of all civil servants who were senior officials during the Soviet days but also all those who were employed during Yanukovych’s presidency. This is equivalent to the current Liberal government in Australia sacking all senior public servants who were in office during the previous Labor administration. By one year after the implementation of this purge, the Ukrainian capitalist state purged 700 senior public servants. Many more resigned themselves. Meanwhile, through its “decommunisation” policy, the Kiev regime has prevented the Communist Party of Ukraine – which in the elections immediately preceding Euromaidan received more than 13% of the vote – from standing in elections. The measures also mean that anyone who displays a communist or Soviet flag, sings the communist Internationale song or the Soviet anthem can be jailed for five years. Similarly, those who question the “heroism” of the Nazi-collaborating Ukrainian paramilitary groups – including the Ukrainian division that was formally incorporated into the Nazis Waffen-SS – are jailed! Meanwhile, books with even the slightest criticism of these Holocaust-participating groups have been banned in Ukraine.
The Ukrainian capitalist state’s embrace of fascist elements extends well beyond ideology and symbols. In late 2014, the Ukrainian National Guard incorporated into its ranks the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion (a militia so extreme in its white supremacy that the Australian fascist who murdered 51 Muslims in New Zealand in March 2019 wore on his flak jacket the symbol most closely associated with this militia whom he also hailed in his manifesto). This is the same as if the U.S. were to incorporate the Ku Klux Klan into its National Guard! With such official sanction and with individual fascists in leading positions within the state machinery, Ukrainian neo-Nazi paramilitary groups have felt emboldened to murder several members of the Roma community, burn synagogues and attack the LGBTIQ community. In 2018, they conducted simultaneous violent attacks on International Women’s Day rallies in several Ukrainian cities. These far-right terrorists are rarely ever prosecuted for such crimes – they seem to have impunity. So too do those who murder dissident journalists and social activists in Ukraine. In April 2015, pro-Russia journalist, Oles Buzina, was shot dead. The following year, investigative journalist, Pavel Sheremet, was killed in a car bomb. Then in July 2018, anti-corruption campaigner and local council member, Kateryna Handzyuk, was murdered in a terrifying acid attack.
Among the most extreme cases of the Ukrainian regime abetting far-right terror was seen in the multi-ethnic city of Odessa on 2 May 2014. There Ukrainian fascists attacked a protest by anti-government and pro-Russian activists. When the activists took sanctuary in the city’s Trade Union Hall, the fascists set the building alight and beat those who managed to escape the flames. The Ukrainian police simply stood aside and watched the activists get murdered and allowed the fascists to block firefighters from using their equipment. In all, Ukrainian fascists, abetted by the police, murdered 45 anti-Euromaidan activists that day.
Meanwhile, the Ukrainian capitalist regime is so racist that Ukrainian border guards have prevented international students (from places like Nigeria, Zimbabwe, India and Morocco) fleeing the recent war from boarding trains to exit Ukraine. The guards have given preference to Ukrainians, racially abused dark-skinned students and forced international students approaching the border to alight from vehicles and walk huge distances in freezing weather to get to the border so that Ukrainians could use their vehicles instead. Moroccan student Amani al-Attar told Al Jazeera news the experience that she and her friends had trying to cross the border into Poland from Ukraine. She says that she saw Ukrainian troops beat some international students with batons or the butts of rifles. “The army differentiated between people depending on their skin colour and gender,” said al-Attar. The Al Jazeera report continued:
“Also, the darker your skin the worse and longer the wait,” al-Attar told Al Jazeera, adding Black people and Asians were beaten and sent to the back of the queues.
“At this point, people were splayed on the ground with hypothermia. Others were collapsing from exhaustion. But that was just us Arabs, Black people and Asians. Ukrainians got through in minutes,” she said.
So much for the basic democratic principle that everyone is equal before the law that the Western powers are supposedly fighting to defend by backing Ukraine in this war!
As for the so-called “democracy” that the Western capitalist powers claim to practice, this is not a democracy for all the people but in practice only a democracy for the rich. For although everyone can vote in their “democracies”, the whole political atmosphere is shaped by heavily funded political parties, electoral advertising, lobbying and privately funded think tanks, all of which the ultra-rich have a greatly disproportionate ability to finance. Therefore it is they the rich capitalists who entirely dominate political life. Meanwhile, it is they, or the government that serves them, that own all the major media, thus ensuring that the capitalists’ “democratic” grip over public opinion is super tight. Meanwhile, which ever party wins elections, they administer a state whose judges, police, military officers and other top personnel are tied by thousands of threads to the powerful big end of town. Therefore, what we have in capitalist “democracies” is a tyranny of the tycoons. In Australia, the right to strike is so severely restricted that it would make any “authoritarian regime” proud. Meanwhile, the Australian regime has hit David McBride, one of the people who exposed the military’s horrific war crimes in Afghanistan, with charges that could see him imprisoned for 50 years for his whistleblowing. As for the “leader of the democratic world”, the U.S. regime, it is the world’s biggest jailer. The number of people that the U.S. jails is equal to 80% of the entire population of the Ukrainian capital, Kiev! Moreover, it is not only in interventions abroad that the Western “democratic” regimes commit heinous crimes. Racist U.S. police shoot dead on average more than one thousand people every year – disproportionately black and other people of colour. Here, the regime not only murders Aboriginal people in state custody but removes Aboriginal children from their families with all the intensity of the Stolen Generations period but with more “democratic” cover.
It is true that there is right now a bit more space for anti-government protests in some Western “democracies” than there is in Russia – and certainly much more than in the Ukraine. Yet, this is only because right now their rule is more stable than in either Russia or Ukraine due to these rich country capitalists being able to pacify a sizable chunk of their middle class and a better paid section of their working class by giving them a small share of the massive profits that these imperialists reap from exploiting the peoples of the “Third World”. However, whenever they are afraid of significant opposition, these Western “democrats” throw out their own supposed “democratic principles” in a flash. Thus, afraid that opposition to their dangerous interference in the Ukraine-Russia war will emerge, the Western powers are violating all their claims to stand for “free speech” by censoring pro-Russia voices. The European Union banned Russian media outlets RT and Sputnik from broadcasting in the bloc. In Australia, an audience member in the ABC’s Q + A current affairs program who asked a question that called out media bias in reporting the conflict, was summarily expelled from the program by its presenter! Meanwhile, the Australian government is pushing Facebook, Twitter, Google, TikTok, Reddit and other digital platforms to block content generated by Russian media. This will mean that individuals who express views agreeing with those made by Russian media on some issues will inevitably also be censored
Worried about the growing strength of socialistic China, the “democratic” Western rulers are actually becoming increasingly authoritarian. Here, they have not only witch-hunted members of the Chinese community and other public figures that have dared to show sympathy towards China but have also unleashed threatening police raids against such individuals – as they did to a NSW Labour MP who in 2020 dared to praise China’s successful response to the pandemic. When they see a powerful challenge emerging to their rule, as it inevitably will, these “democrats” will not hesitate to use the most brutal authoritarian methods to try and crush opposition forces. Let us remember that the big time German capitalists who ended up supporting Hitler were one time “liberal democrats”! What the Western capitalist ruling classes, like all capitalists, really care about are not any abstract principles of “democracy” but preserving their rule of exploitation and expanding their super-profits. These are the reasons why they participate in wars and provoke wars fought by others. Capitalist rulers – whether from imperialist countries or dependent ones – have never fought or supported an external war for the sake of “democracy” … and they never will!
The main reason that the imperial powers want to frame the current war as a “contest between democracy and authoritarianism” is that they want to utilise public anger at Russia over this war to motivate their Cold War against socialistic China. To do this they seek to put China in the same boat as Russia. On Monday, Morrison blustered that Australia and the world were being challenged by an “arc of autocracy” involving Russia and China. Yet the truth is that China has maintained a strictly neutral position on this war. Although she has not condemned Russia’s intervention, she has not endorsed it either. China maintains friendly relations with Russia not out of any shared belief in “autocracy” or “authoritarianism,” as the imperialist regimes would have us believe, but firstly, because both are being targeted (albeit for very different reasons), by Western imperialism and secondly, in order to pursue mutually beneficial trade relations and technology exchanges.
Media propaganda has been so desperate to link Russia and China together that they have even, quiet ridiculously, portrayed Putin as some sort of unconscious, semi-communist. They keep on referring to Putin saying 17 years ago that, “the collapse of the Soviet Union was a major geopolitical disaster of the century.” But Putin was not here referring to the collapse of socialistic rule in the Soviet Union. After all he personally played an active part in the capitalist counterrevolution that destroyed the Soviet workers state. During the counterrevolution, Putin was an adviser to then Leningrad/St Petersburg mayor Anatoly Sobchak, who was the second most prominent force in Russia promoting the capitalist counterrevolution next to Boris Yeltsin. What Putin was lamenting was only the breakup of a unitary state encompassing the region of much of the pre-Soviet Tsarist empire. This is clear if one reads what he said immediately after that often quoted phrase:
“As for the Russian nation, it became a genuine drama. Tens of millions of our co-citizens and co-patriots found themselves outside Russian territory. Moreover, the epidemic of disintegration infected Russia itself.”
It is clear that what Putin was lamenting was that Russians were no longer in a unitary state and had lost power. Putin had hoped that the socialistic Soviet Union would be replaced by a capitalist Russian-dominated empire on the territory of the old Soviet Union. Putin’s goal is definitely not a new Soviet workers state but a new Russian empire like the Tsarist one. To get a sense of Putin’s ideology, one has only to read his 21 February address to the Russian nation, the speech where he announced the recognition of the independence of Donetsk and Luhansk. The entire first one-third of the speech was a tirade against communism, the Soviet Union, the Bolsheviks and especially its leader Lenin. Putin particularly takes aim at the Bolshevik policy of upholding the right to self determination of the non-Russian peoples of the Soviet Union. All this should not be one bit surprising. This ideology is entirely consistent with the practice of a long-time administrator of Russian capitalism who seeks a new Russian sphere of influence within the territory of the former Soviet Union.
In actual fact there is a political Great Wall that separates China from Putin’s Russia. China is a socialistic state. Russia in contrast is a capitalist country, just like the U.S, Australia, Ukraine, India, Indonesia and the Philippines. The Western ruling classes are antagonistic towards Russia only because their predatory capitalist interests happen to clash with the interests of the Russian capitalist class. It has nothing to do with “democracy versus authoritarianism” or “democracy versus autocracy”. The hostility of the Australian and American capitalist rulers towards China also has nothing to do with “democracy versus autocracy.” However, it is for a very different reason to their opposition to Russia. Their enmity towards the PRC is all about the enmity of capitalist rulers towards socialistic states.
It is true that the Chinese workers state does not presently operate in the ideal form of a workers state, which is workers democracy – where political power is exercised by elected councils of workers and their allies in which all those who uphold working class rule will be able to freely debate and decide on matters. Instead, the working class hold power in China in an indirect manner with political administration monopolised by a middle class bureaucracy that administers the socialistic economy, while bending to the pressures of both world imperialism and China’s small capitalist class. That true workers democracy is not dominant in China weakens the workers state and makes it less resistant to attack from capitalist counterrevolutionaries claiming to stand for “democracy”. Therefore, we stand for workers democracy to be achieved in China in the course of the working class mobilising in action to confiscate China’s tech, real estate and retail sectors from the hands of the capitalists and placing it into the hands of the workers state. We want the Chinese workers state to be strengthened and for her progress towards socialism to be accelerated. However, the current lack of genuine workers democracy in China is hardly why Scot Morrison and Co. are hostile to the PRC! After all they have no wish to strengthen the Chinese workers state!
The Australian ruling class’ talk of opposing “authoritarianism” and “autocracy” when “explaining” their opposition to China and their lumping in of China with capitalist Russia are part of a conscious attempt by them to deceive the masses about the real reason for their hostility to China. That real reason is simply the enmity of the capitalist class to states ruled by the working class. Australia’s capitalist rulers know all too well that if the working class here understands the true reason for the ruling class’ hostility to the PRC, large parts of the working class would choose to side with workers China.
Let Us Learn from the Bolsheviks
In the face of the intense propaganda campaign being waged by the imperialist powers and their media about this war, it is necessary for socialists to stand firm and advocate the line that expresses the interests of the workers and all the oppressed. Unfortunately, much of the Left have not stood firm. They have capitulated to the propaganda of the ruling class and more precisely to the middle class “public opinion” that this propaganda has created. Thus, the article on the conflict in the website of the Socialist Alternative (SAlt) group calls for solidarity and support to “the Ukrainians who are bravely fighting against Russian invasion.” Although SAlt criticises the West for not showing similar support to the Palestinians as they are to the Ukrainians, what SAlt here are doing is giving “solidarity and support” to the side in this inter-capitalist war that is being supported by the West. In other words these socialists are on the same side in this war as the racist capitalist ruling class at home.
Similarly, Socialist Alliance, Solidarity and other left groups organised a march held in Sydney last Sunday under the main slogan, “Russia Out of Ukraine.” The event was sponsored by the Sydney Stop the War Coalition, IPAN and also by two groups in which the Communist Party of Australia (CPA) play leading roles: Anti-Bases Campaign Coalition and the Sydney Anti-AUKUS Coalition. Video footage of the event shows the rally emcee making clear in her opening remarks that the rally was supporting Ukraine in this war. In other words, the mobilisation was supporting the same side in the war as Scott Morrison, Peter Dutton and Anthony Albanese. The featured speaker at the event, Greens upper house NSW MP David Shoebridge, even went on a neoconservative rant implying that sanctions on Russia should have been implemented two decades earlier (!!) by criticising the West for buying Russian oil during that period. To be sure, video footage of the event also showed that some other speakers did rightly condemn Western imperialist interventions in other conflicts as well as oppression by the ruling class at home. However, such remarks and the small sub-slogan on the main rally banner, “No to NATO expansionism”, are almost meaningless when the main call of the rally is one supporting the military side taken by NATO and the Australian imperialists. Despite what may be said in some of the speeches, a mobilisation in Australia calling for “Russia Out of Ukraine” can only validate the push by Australia’s capitalist rulers and their U.S. senior partners to escalate their anti-Russia intervention into the war. It can only help them to “justify” intensifying their cruel sanctions against the people of Russia and embolden them to step up their supply of weapons to the Ukrainian regime. Therefore, in as much as it had an impact, this March 6 rally assisted the Western imperialists to pour more oil onto the flames of this conflict.
Below is the Call-Out for the March 6 Rally That We Boycotted
Consider what people in the city would think when they see hundreds of people march by behind a big banner screaming, “Russia Out of Ukraine” (the very small slogan underneath it against NATO expansionism would be almost lost to them). They would conclude: a lot of people agree with Scott Morrison, Peter Dutton and Anthony Albanese about this war. Thus the rally acted in the direction of boosting the authority of Australia’s warmongering ruling class. That can only help them in their drive to use this conflict to intensify their Cold War drive against socialistic China.
Therefore, we urge our readers NOT to participate in any future actions similar to the “Russia Out of Ukraine” action held on March 6. Please also do NOT participate in any other actions mobilised on the basis of support to Ukraine in this war. Instead, do your best to dissuade any of your friends from joining such actions.
In resisting the international agenda of our own imperialists we must learn from Lenin’s Bolsheviks. At the outbreak of World War I there was massive pressure on Russian socialists to support the war efforts of their own rulers. Patriotic fervor was intense. Besides, it was said that Austria-Hungary and its German allies had “started” the war. The Bolsheviks insisted that it does not matter who “starts” the war – this is a reactionary war between rival imperialist powers. They called to turn the inter-imperialist war into a class war against the capitalist rulers of each of the warring parties. The main enemy is at home, they insisted. Their stance provoked outrage in Russia. The Bolsheviks faced much, much more pressure to adapt to the war agenda of their own rulers than we face today. Workers who had bought the propaganda violently attacked the Bolsheviks in the factories, hurling bits of metal at them to drive them out. Not only did the Bolsheviks lose a lot of support, many of their own weaker members quit the movement. Meanwhile, leading members of the party were arrested, convicted of high treason and banished to Siberia. Yet the party stuck to the line that they knew was correct. Eventually, as the war progressed and the terrible suffering that it caused became evident, workers slowly realised that the Bolsheviks had been right all along. That they had stood firm on the unpopular stance that they took at the start of the war later gave the party immense authority amongst the most politically aware sections of the working class. With this authority that came from standing firm in very difficult times, the Bolsheviks were able to lead the workers, poor peasants and oppressed nationalities of Russia to power just three years after they had been harshly ostracised.
Today, we need to build a communist party that will stand firm like Lenin’s Bolsheviks. We fight to advance towards that goal by today insisting that the main enemy of the working class and downtrodden of Australia is not Putin’s capitalist regime but the capitalist rulers of Australia and its U.S. and NATO allies. We stand for building actions that will say: No to sanctions on Russia! Oppose U.S. and Australian arms grants to Ukraine! Down with NATO! No to escalation of the Cold War drive against socialistic China! No nuclear submarines for the Australian military! Stand with socialistic China to stand by working class interests!
If we take such a firm stand against our own capitalist exploiters, then we may well help inspire leftists and workers in Ukraine and Russia to oppose the war drive of each of their own respective capitalist rulers and wage class war against these oppressors.
24 February 2022: Below is a summary of Trotskyist Platform’s position on the conflict in Ukraine:
Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Yemen, Palestine: Victims of U.S., Australian and NATO War Machines
The Main Threat to the World’s People and the Main Enemy of the Australian Working Class is Not Putin’s Ambitious Capitalist Regime But the U.S., Australian and Other Western Imperialists
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Oppose Western Imperialism’s Provocative and Hypocritical Interference in Ukraine And Oppose Sanctions Against Russia! No NATO Expansion! No Western Arms to Ukraine!
For Unity of the Russian and Ukrainian Working Classes Against Both their Capitalist Rulers!
For the Right to Self-Determination of the Persecuted Russian-Speaking People in Donbass and All Ethnicities of the Former USSR!
ABBOTT & SHORTEN USE UKRAINE PLANETRAGEDYTOPROMOTESUPPORTFORAUSSIEIMPERIALISM
DEFEND THE JUST STRUGGLE OF THE PEOPLE OF THE DONBASS
FOR THE REVOLUTIONARY UNITY OF THEUKRAINIANANDRUSSIANWORKINGCLASS!
September22, 2014– On July 16 2014, an Israeli military attack killed four boys between the ages of 9 and 11 as they played soccer on a Gaza beach. This was a horrific crime all too typical of the Israeli military. In its July and August assault on Gaza, they killed 2,133 Palestinians, overwhelmingly civilians and nearly 500 of whom were children. Yet Israel’s genocidal assault has been supported by the Australian government. Prime Minister Abbott and Foreign Minister, Julie Bishop, have refused to even condemn the killing of Palestinian children. Indeed, the day after the murder of the Palestinian children playing on the beach, Bishop issued a press release blaming Hamas for the war and outrageously praising Israel for its supposed determination to accept a ceasefire. So when the powerful and sophisticated Israeli military carries out incessant attacks on Gaza that they know are mostly killing Palestinian civilians, the Australian regime and much of the mainstream media excuse this as self-defence.
Yetwhenon the very same day as that Bishop press release, Malaysian Airline flight MH17 was tragically shot down over eastern Ukraine, the Australian government, without any credible evidence whatsoever, unleashed aggressive language that blamed Russian-speaking rebels in eastern Ukraine and their Russian backers for deliberately downing the civilian aircraft. Abbott rushed to declare, “These were innocent people going about their lives and they have been wantonly killed by Russian-backed rebels using probably, quite possibly equipment supplied by [Russia].” Later he followed this up with further shrill denunciations. Abbott screamed that Russia was a “bully” and ranted that Ukraine has been “subject to active destabilisation and indeed outright invasion from Russia.” Now, the Liberal-National Party regime has implemented further sanctions on Russia and has announced that it is considering supplying the hard right Ukrainian regime with “non-lethal” military assistance.
The shooting down of MH17 was, indeed, a horrible human-made tragedy that took the lives of 298 innocent passengers and crew. Among the dead were 193 Dutch people, 43 Malaysians (including popular actress Shuba Jay) and 37 Australian residents (some of whom were citizens of overseas countries.) Six of those tragically killed in the crash were delegates on their way to the 20th International AIDS Conference in Melbourne. Yet not only is it not clear who shot down the aircraft, current indications of who was responsible actually point away from the Donbass-based rebels. Now, it is of course possible that the rebel forces representing Russian-speaking people seeking self-rule for the Donbass region of eastern Ukraine could have shot down the aircraft by mistake, thinking it was a Ukrainian military plane. Let us assume for a moment that the wild and completely unsubstantiated accusations of the Western rulers turn out to be correct and a rebel missile did, indeed, bring down the Malaysian airliner. Then there is certainly negligence involved in not properly checking to ensure that the targeted aircraft was not a civilian airliner. However, far, far greater criminal negligence would then fall on the part of the aviation authorities and the greedy capitalist airline bosses who, to save fuel costs, continued to authorise flights over a dangerous war zone where military aircraft have already been shot down by surface to air missiles. If the Donbass resistance were, in fact, the ones who brought down the plane, it is absolutely certain that the shooting of the plane would have been a case of mistaken identity as they could have gained no military advantage from downing a Malaysian civilian airliner and would have, indeed, suffered a massive propaganda blow from it. Although they would still be guilty of negligence, there is a massive, absolutely enormous difference between this and the deliberate terrorist shooting down of a civilian airliner which Obama, Abbott and other Western rulers have deceitfully implied was the case. Later, we shall address the question of who, ultimately, has the most responsibility for the airline tragedy even if it was after all the Donbass rebels that fired the shots.
Yet, it is far, far from certain or even probable that the Donbass rebels did bring down the airliner. For one, there has been no tangible evidence that Russia or anyone else supplied the Donetsk rebels with the BUK-M1 surface to air missile that Western and Ukrainian rulers say brought down the Malaysian plane. Previously, the rebels had never even used such a missile. The Ukrainian military planes that they had earlier destroyed were all shot down at much lower altitude with another less advanced missile system. That system is incapable of shooting down an aircraft flying at 33,000 feet which is the altitude that the Malaysian airliner was flying at. Indeed, a group of retired U.S. intelligence officers from the CIA, FBI, U.S. Army and other agencies are so concerned that the unsubstantiated claims by the U.S. government are harming U.S. interests that they released an open memorandum to Obama stating that:
Twelve days after the shoot-down of Malaysian Airlines Flight 17, your administration still has issued no coordinated intelligence assessment summarizing what evidence exists to determine who was responsible – much less to convincingly support repeated claims that the plane was downed by a Russian-supplied missile in the hands of Ukrainian separatists.
– http://consortiumnews.com/2014/07/29/obama-should-release-ukraine-evidence/
This open memorandum is all the more telling given that these retired U.S. intelligenceofficers are hardly opponents of U.S. imperialism – indeed, the memorandum takes as a positive example right wing former president Ronald Reagan’s release of intelligence information to “justify” the U.S. bombing of Libya in 1986!
So, if the Donestsk rebels did not bring down the Malaysian airliner who else could have shot it down? The Russian Defence Ministry maintained that its air traffic control had picked up at least one Ukrainian Air Force Sukhoi SU-25 fighter just 3 to 5 km from the Malaysian airliner before the incident. This information release was, no doubt, aimed at suggesting that it was a Ukrainian fighter jet that brought down the passenger plane. Certainly given the current tensions between Russia and Ukraine, the Russian government has an interest in pointing the finger at Kiev. Yet, what has given this hypothesis a serious life is when none other than the flagship, mainstream newspaper of Malaysia, NewStraitsTimes, published several articles suggesting that MH17 was brought down by a missile fired from a Ukrainian aircraft and then finished off with aircraft gunfire. Thus, a New Straits Times article carried on its website on August 7, headlined “US analysts conclude MH17 downed by aircraft,” commenced as follows:
INTELLIGENCE analysts in the United States had already concluded that Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 was shot down by an air-to-air missile, and that the Ukrainian government had had something to do with it.
This corroborates an emerging theory postulated by local investigators that the Boeing 777-200 was crippled by an air-to-air missile and finished off with cannon fire from a fighter that had been shadowing it as it plummeted to earth.
In a damning report dated Aug 3, headlined `Flight 17 Shoot-Down Scenario Shifts’, Associated Press reporter Robert Parry said `some US intelligence sources had concluded that the rebels and Russia were likely not at fault and that it appears Ukrainian government forces were to blame’. – http://www.nst.com.my/node/20925
The New Straits Times article continued:
Yesterday, the New Straits Times quoted experts who had said that photographs of the blast fragmentation patterns on the fuselage of the airliner showed two distinct shapes – the shredding pattern associated with a warhead packed with “flechettes”, and the more uniform, round-type penetration holes consistent with that of cannon rounds.
The above evidence is significant because cannon rounds could not have reached the aircraft from the ground – they had to be fired from another aircraft. New Straits Times also quoted Michael Bociurkiw, a Ukrainian- Canadian monitor with the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) who, along with another colleague, was the first international monitor to reach the wreckage after flight MH17 was brought down. In a July 29 Canadian Broadcasting Corporation interview, Bociurkiw, had stated that:
There have been two or three pieces of fuselage that have been really pockmarked with what almost looks like machinegun fire; very, very strong machinegun fire.
To put the New Straits Times reports into perspective one has to understand what this newspaper represents. New Straits Times is not only the main establishment newspaper of Malaysia, it is also closely linked to the Malaysian government – a government which while not quite as fully subservient to Washington as its neighbours is nevertheless far closer to the U.S. rulers than it is to Russia. This newspaper has no political interest in contradicting the Western narrative about the plane tragedy. Soon after the New Straits Times reports, Malasyia’s defence minister, Hishammuddin Hussein came out and denied that MH17 was shot down by fighter jets. Yet, since then New Straits Times has run at least one article supporting the alternative narrative (see, for example: http://www.nst. com.my/node/22405). However, all these New Straits Times accounts and the evidence they are based on have been completely ignored by the Western mainstream media. Furthermore, the U.S., British and Australian rulers who had been so aggressively denouncing Russia and the Donetsk rebels over MH17 have now become fairly quiet about the whole incident adding to suspicions that they are aware that another party were the real perpetrators.
If it was the Ukrainian military that did, indeed, shoot down MH17 what possible motive could they have? One suggestion is based on the fact that the livery of Malaysian Airlines sported by MH17 is rather close to the Russian tri-colour. They could have mistakenly thought it was a Russian transport aircraft. Another hypothesis is based on reports that at the time of the shooting, Vladimir Putin’s aircraft, whose Russian tri-colour based livery is similar to that of the Malaysian airliner – was in the air not all that far from MH17. Could the shooting down of MH17 have been a botched attempt by the Ukrainian Air Force to assassinate Putin? Then there is a still more sinister possible motive: that the right wing Ukrainian regime shot down the plane in order to blame the rebels. Could this be possible? Certainly the Ukrainian regime has a motive for doing this. The blame that the rebel forces received for the shooting down of the civilian aircraft was a great propaganda coup for the Ukrainian government. If the Ukrainian military did shoot down MH17 in such a false flag attack then in that case the downing of the civilian airliner would have not been a terrible accident caused by negligence from various parties but deliberate mass murder. It would seem unthinkable for any humansto undertake such a heinous crime. Yet, other U.S.-backed forces involved in conflicts have committed precisely these kinds of attacks – especially the imperialist-backed Syrian “rebels.” For example, in May 2012, 108 civilians including 49 children were horrifically massacred in the town of Taldou in Syria’s Houla Plains. The Syrian “rebels” displayed the bodies to UN inspectors and to their supporters in the Western media as evidence of the Syrian pro- government forces supposed responsibility for the massacre. Yet a German mainstream newspaper soon uncovered that it was the Western-backed “rebels” who had in fact committed the massacre and had displayed the bodies in order to blame the Syrian government.
Even less morally averse to downing a civilian aircraft than the Ukrainian Army are the fascist militias that have, as volunteers, joined the Ukrainian military’s fight against the rebels. These murderous fascists hark back to the tradition of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army of Stepan Bandera, which allied with the Nazis invaders against the Soviet Union during World War II. The Bandera forces murdered over 100,000 Poles, Jews and Communists in a series of gruesome massacres. Today’s Ukrainian fascist irregulars not only have a fanatical hatred of Russian speakers but are extreme white supremacists who would have little qualm in targeting a civilian aircraft from an Asian airline.
Then there is, of course, the possibility that the U.S. directly shot down the aircraft. Certainly, the U.S. and allied imperialists have been the greatest beneficiaries from the political fallout from the shooting down of MH17. It has put Washington’s Russian capitalist rival on the diplomatic back foot. The U.S. imperialists have long treated the peoples of the “Third World” as expendable pawns. Thus, while claims that the U.S. government was behind the September 11, 2001 bombings must, surely, be far-fetched given that the target was a key symbol of U.S. capitalist, financial and commercial power, the targeting of an Asian airliner is well within the range of past CIA actions. These cold-hearted enforcers of U.S. capitalist interests would rationalise this as “unfortunate collateral damage” incurred for the sake of the greater good – that is, the good of U.S. imperialism!
The U.S. rulers certainly know all about shooting down civilian airliners. On 3rd July 1988, the U.S. Navy guided missile cruiser USS Vincennes downed Iran Air flight 655 which was on a regular flight from Tehran to Dubai. All 274 passengers and 16 crew aboard Iranian Airbus A300 were killed by the U.S. missile strike. The Iranian passenger airliner was on its normal flight path within Iranian airspace and above Iranian territorial waters in the Persian Gulf when it was shot down. The U.S. never apologised or accepted any responsibility for the killing of the people aboard Iran Air flight 655 and claimed that the crew of the warship had misidentified the plane as an F14-A Tomcat fighter aircraft. Except that the passenger airliner was in regular English language radio contact with air traffic controllers. Moreover, not only was the airliner well within a recognised civilian air corridor, it was a full 20km away from the U.S. warship when the latter fired the two missiles that killed all 290 people aboard the aircraft.
The mainstream Western media don’t want to talk too much about this horrific incident today when attacking the Donetsk rebels and Russia over the MH17 tragedy. Yet there are also some important differences between the U.S. shooting down the Iranian airliner and the accusation that Donbass rebels brought down MH17. If the, increasing doubtful, claim that the Eastern Ukraine based rebels downed MH17 were true then the accidental strike would have been conducted by a desperate force fighting a war and shooting down an aircraft above its own territory. In contrast, the U.S. was not at war when the USS Vincennes shot down Iran Air flight 655 and, further, that attack was unleashed thousands of miles away from the U.S.A in the Persian Gulf. This makes U.S. claims that their warship misidentified the airliner highly dubious. Also, while NATO and the Australian government are accusing a ragtag rebel army lacking advanced surveillance systems of shooting down MH17, Iranian Air flight 655 was downed by the most powerful military force in the world – a force with more than adequate sophistication to clearly distinguish between an attacking military aircraft and a civilian airliner. The U.S. warship’s own Aegis Combat System picked up the Iranian airliner’s radio transmitter’s emission of the normal Mode III code clearly identifying it as a civilian airliner on its normal course. Furthermore, it turned out that the warship’s advanced surveillance system had also recorded that the aircraft was in a steady climb, not the descending profile of an attack run. Most Iranians, not to mention most rational observers in general, believe that the U.S. warship deliberately shot down the civilian airliner. This was either because the U.S. wanted to teach disobedient Iran a lesson or because a trigger happy crew wanted to try out their new advanced combat system.
Russians are, themselves, familiar with this kind of horrific tragedy. On 4 October 2001 Siberian Airlines Flight 1812 heading to the Russian city of Novosibirsk from Tel Aviv, Israel was shot down and crashed into the Black Sea, killing all 78 passengers onboard. At first denying any involvement, Ukraine ended up paying $15 million in compensation to victims’ families as evidence clearly pointed to the Ukrainian military accidentally shooting down the plane during a training exercise. The fact that Ukraine, thus, carries such recent form in this area has, predictably, garnered scant attention in the Western press in the wake of the MH17 disaster.
CANBERRA’S MEDDLING IN UKRAINE:GOOD FOR AUSTRALIA’S CAPITALIST EXPLOITERS,
BAD FOR THE WORKING CLASS & OPPRESSED
So what can we say in summary about who shot down MH17? Unlike the tycoon or capitalist government-owned Western media, we Marxists base ourselves on reality and have noreason to distort the truth. Nor do we have aneed to present scenarios that are only possibilities or even probabilities as dead certainties. Taking this approach, in summary, as we go to press, we can say that it is not certain who brought down Malaysian airline flight MH17. However, we can say that the analysis of actual hard evidence thus far points more towards the Ukrainian military as the perpetrators rather than the Eastern Ukraine rebels. And what we can say with absolute certainty is that in the (increasingly less likely) case that the Donbass rebels did bring down the airliner, this was an accidental shooting. Yet not only have the Liberal government, the ALP opposition and the mainstream media all rushed to pronounce both the Donbass rebels and their Russian backers as guilty, they have deviously equated the possible accidental shooting by these forces with a deliberate terrorist attack on a passenger-filled civilian airliner. In stark contrast, at the very same time that it was making these lurid allegations against the Donbass rebels, the Australian ruling class apologised for Israel’s deliberate devastation of Gaza which the Australian regime knew amounted to the deliberate mass slaughter of Palestinian civilians. So why these diametrically opposite responses from the Australian ruling class?
In the case of the war on Gaza, the U.S. and Australian rulers support Israel’s brutal assault because Israel has long been a key henchman for Western imperialism in the Middle East region. In contrast, the Donbass rebels and Russia are not the lapdogs of NATO and are, thus, targets for the Western imperialists’ propaganda attacks and economic sanctions. The capitalist powers in the West want a loyal partner in power in Kiev because they want prized access to markets and investment opportunities in the Ukraine. However, that is not their only purpose. They meddle in Ukraine in order to ensure that there is a regime there that will act as a counterweight to – and a container of – Russia. With this aim, the U.S. and its allies have drawn not only Ukraine but Georgia into an “Intensified Dialogue” with NATO in what they hope will be a step towards integrating these countries into NATO membership itself. Three other former Soviet republics were brought into NATO membership in 2004: Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. These moves are not only aimed in big part against Russia but also against the Western imperialists’ ultimate target – socialistic China.
The U.S.-led Western powers largely rule the world – brutally exploiting the masses of the so-called “Third World” and toppling disobedient governments seemingly at will. They tolerate no opposition to their tyranny. The U.S. rulers and their counterparts in the likes of Britain and Australia killed hundreds of thousands of people when they invaded and occupied Iraq and Afghanistan. They have fuelled a bloody proxy war in Syria against the uncompliant Assad government. Today, these Western colonial predators are using the crimes of the ISIS monster that they had until recently fed and nurtured as a force against the Syrian government, as an excuse to again directly intervene to impose their will on Iraq and to more openly fight for regime change in Syria. Earlier in 2011, they devastated Libya with air strikes in order to remove the all too independent Gaddafi government in Libya. In short, the U.S., British and Australian imperialist ruling classes are used to getting their way and will do anything to ensure that they do. So the last thing that these imperial overlords will accept is a new, emerging capitalist rival with the potential to tread on their turf (which the Western imperialists now consider to be almost the entire world!) However, capitalist Russia is just such an emerging power. Although it has been greatly weakened by capitalist restoration in 1991-92, Russia still retains some portion of the former USSR’s industrial and technological might and is today easily the second strongest military power in the world. The Western imperialists, who have largely divided the world between themselves, approach Russia in the same way that criminal gangs unite to curb and bully an upstart new kid on the block rival who could impinge on their operations.
So what is the reason for the Australian rulers getting involved in all of this? After all, Russia and Ukraine are far away from Canberra’s sphere of influence and Russia has no designs on Australia’s neocolonies in the South Pacific. The reason is that Australian imperialism’s tyranny in this region depends on having the backing of the U.S. superpower. It is under the protection of U.S. might that Australian corporate giants like BHP and Woodside steal the oil of East Timor, that Australian mining tycoons plunder the natural resources of PNG, that the Australian military and cops often jackboot around the South Pacific
and that Australian judges and high-level bureaucrats get muscled into the upper echelons of the state institutions of PNG and the Solomon Islands. Thus, the Australian ruling class want to do everything possible to uphold U.S./NATO domination of the world – and right now that includes turning the screws on the U.S’s emerging Russian competitor.
Australia’s capitalist rulers are not just puppets of the U.S. but are, rather, willing junior partners in the same way that medium-sized criminal bosses always want the particular mafia godfather that they are allied with to be the number one mobster. Yet, while it is rational for the likes of Andrew Forrest, Clive Palmer, Gina Rinehart, the Lowy family, James Packer and the greedy major owners of BHP, Rio Tinto and Woodside to back Canberra’s support for Washington’s great power machinations, it is completely against the interests of the Australian working class to do so. The more that the Western imperialist gang that the Australian ruling class is allied with is successful in its quest to strengthen its world domination, the more arrogant will the Australian capitalist rulers become at home. That means more aggressive attacks on our unions, more severe cutbacks to entitlements for the very poor, more anti-working class privatisations of infrastructure and public housing and further measures to exclude working class people from access to decent healthcare and education. It means more extreme all- sided racist oppression of Aboriginal people and still more brutal government attacks on refugees. That is why it is in the interests of the working class and all of the downtrodden to see the predatory international schemes of their ruling class oppressors suffer setbacks – setbacks in Ukraine/Russia and setbacks everywhere else. The Australian workers movement and left must demand: Down with NATO/Australian meddling in Ukraine! No to the plan to station Australian Federal Police officers in Kiev – Down with the Abbott government’s threat to send military aid to the right wing Ukrainian regime! Lift all U.S., EU and Australian sanctions on Russia! U.S./ Australian imperialism: Hands off Iraq and Syria! Defend Syria against NATO and their “Free Syrian Army” and religious fundamentalist “rebel” proxies!
UKRAINE’SRIGHT WING COUP: PLOTTED BY WASHINGTON, SPEARHEADED BY FASCIST THUGS
Until earlier this year, Ukraine actually had a government that maintained fairly friendly relations with its Russian neighbour. That government was headed by then president Viktor Yanukovych who, following his election victory in the 2010 presidential polls, sought to balance relations with Russia and the West. However, when Yanukovych announced in November 2013 that he was putting off close integration with the EU in favour of stronger ties with Russia (highlighted by his acceptance of a huge loan offer from Russia), pro-Western anti-government protests erupted. The protests were able to ride on anger at the high unemployment and high poverty rates – especially in Western Ukraine – overseen by the corrupt, capitalist government. Yet from the start, the “solutions” offered by the groups leading the protests were right wing and dominated by aggressive Ukrainian nationalism.
Behind the then opposition movement stood Washington which, seeing a chance to undermine Russian influence in Ukraine, backed the movement with both massive funding for opposition “NGOs” as well as with tactical direction. The U.S. government’s intervention was so blatant that U.S. Assistant Secretary of State, Victoria Nuland, and Ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt, openly joined the then opposition protests – even handing out cakes to the right wing protesters. The extent of this U.S. intervention is also readily apparent in a recording of an intercept of a phone conversation between Nuland and Pyatt (see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbOwfeoDX2o). The conversation begins with the ambassador saying, “I think we’re in play” (i.e. their efforts to affect regime change and determine the next government of Ukraine are in play!) Nuland and Pyatt express satisfaction that American diplomat and UN Under-Secretary- General for Political Affairs, Jeff Feltman, had succeeded in getting the UN to agree to send Dutch UN diplomat Robert Serry to Ukraine to promote the regime change or, as Nuland puts it, “help glue this thing together.” Later, Pyatt speaks of the need to get an international personality to come to Ukraine “to help midwife this thing.” Yet U.S. imperialism’s officials were not only speaking of how to affect the regime change but, in fact, who should be in the new government! Thus, they decided that “Yats” (i.e. conservative politician Arseniy Yatsenyuk) is “the guy” and Nuland insisted that “Klitsch” (i.e. rival conservative politician Vitali Klitschko) should not be in the government. And guess what happened in the end: “Yats” became the new prime minister and “Klitsch” decided not to be part of the new government!
This was not the first time that the Western powers had orchestrated events in post- Soviet Ukraine. In 2004, after Yanukovych won presidential elections, opposition groups massively financed and trained in “non-violent resistance” by U.S. government agencies – like the notorious National Endowment for Democracy – instigated mass protests against the election results. The movement, dubbed the Orange Revolution, resulted in Yanukovych’s victory being annulled by the courts and a re-run being conducted which resulted in strongly pro- Western candidate, Viktor Yushchenko, winning office.
If the U.S. rulers were the generals of the opposition forces, the shock troops were the local fascist squads. They came mainly from two groups: the Svoboda party and the Pravy Sector (Right Sector). The Svoboda party was formed as the Social National Party of Ukraine in order to identify with the “National Socialist” ideology of Hitler’s Nazis. The party spews hatred against immigrants, Jewish people and Russians, espouses extreme hostility to women’s right to abortion, calls for legal discrimination in economic and social matters against non-ethnic Ukrainians and glorifies the Nazi 4th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS (1st Galician) that was made up of Ukrainians who volunteered to fight on Hitler’s side against the Soviet Red Army. Pravy Sektor, for its part, is composed of various street thug groups notorious for attacks on international students and immigrants. The prominence of Svoboda and Pravy Sektor in the opposition protests grew with time and became decisive as the movement turned violent in January. The fascists then unleashed a series of brutal attacks on opponents of the movement – including government supporters, journalists, state security forces and the offices of Yanukovych’s Party of Regions. The U.S. “democratic” imperialists were fully aware of and accepting of this fascist factor. Ambassador Wyatt said of the Svoboda neo-Nazis: “They have demonstrated their democratic bona fides.” Meanwhile, when prominent U.S. Senator John McCain came to Kiev’s Maidan square to salute the then opposition movement, he made a point about greeting and standing shoulder to shoulder with the leader of the fascist Svoboda party Oleh Tyahnybok. And in that intercepted call between Nuland and Wyatt, the U.S. Assistant Secretary of State declared that, “I thinks Yats is the guy whose got the economic experience, the governing experience. He’s the guy… You know, what he needs is Klitsch and Tyahnybok on the outside, he needs to be talking to them for four times a week.” pro-Western, conservative government that regularly consults with and takes advice from fascists was on Washington’s order of the day!
Up until a late stage of the anti-government protests, the U.S. was actually quite happy to see an arrangement where Yanukovych would retain the presidency while other key government positions would be filled by their men so that the West’s agenda could gradually take over. The EU had also negotiated a compromise deal between Yanukovych and the then opposition. However, the fascists and other hardline sections of the movement refused to accept any compromise and stepped up their violence and their occupation of government buildings. Under the impact of this offensive led by fascist paramilitaries and under pressure from Washington, large chunks of Yanukovych’s Party of Regions abandoned support for him and many defected to the opposition. On February 21, the Ukrainian parliament ousted Yanukovych. Although large numbers of people had participated in the opposition movement, in effect what had happened was that the elected president was overthrown by a right wing movement overseen by Washington and spearheaded by fascists. Oleg Turchynov from the conservative Batkivshchyna (Fatherland) party became Acting President and, yes, “the man” Yats was appointed Prime Minister.
The days leading up to and immediately following February 21 saw a series of frightening fascist attacks on civilians including violence against Jewish people, the desecration of Soviet war memorials, the tearing down of some 25 Lenin statues, the ransacking of the Communist Party of Ukraine’s (KPU) office in Kiev by masked fascists carrying batons and violent attacks on members of the KPU. As a result of the leading role played byfascists in the right wing coup, fascists were appointed to key posts in the new government. Of the 20 ministries in the cabinet, four were initially taken up by Svoboda members. Only the mainstream conservative Fatherland party had more ministries. The fascist Svoboda figures in the new government included the number three figure in the new regime, Vice Prime Minister Oleksandr Sych as well as Defence Minister, Ihor Tenyukh. Additionally, Svoboda fascist Oleh Makhnitsky was appointed Attorney General. Pravy Sektor leader Dmitry Yarosh was offered the deputy national security position but declined the offer.
This fascist representation in the Ukrainian government has declined somewhat over time. Svoboda’s Tenyukh resigned as Defence Minister after less than a month in office a day after the coordinator for Western Ukraine for the neo-Nazi Pravy Sektor was killed in a shootout with Ukrainian police. In June, the Svoboda member acting as Attorney General resigned and this post is now filled by a member of the conservative Fatherland party. Yet the fascist paramilitaries still make up a large portion of the newly formed Ukrainian National Guard and Svoboda has continued to exert a strong influence on the agenda of the government. On July 24, the Communist Party of Ukraine’s parliamentary faction was dissolved by the parliament and 308 criminal proceedings against the party were launched as part of attempts to ban any activity by the party. Furthermore, the authorities have carried out arrests and some in case beatings of KPU members. The international workers movement and left must demand an end to all persecution of the KPU and the restoration of its parliamentary faction!
RACISTOPPRESSIONAND RESISTANCE IN UKRAINE
The fascist influence was also seen in the move to enshrine legal discrimination against non-ethnic Ukrainians. Thus just two days after Yanukovych was ousted, the post- coup parliament voted to repeal the law on regional languages which had stipulated that although Ukraine was the sole national language, a minority language with the status, “regional language,” could be used in courts, schools and other government institutions in areas of Ukraine where the percentage of representatives of national minorities exceeds 10% of the total population of a defined administrative district. In practice the law on regional languages meant that the large areas of the South and East of Ukraine, including the Crimea, with heavy populations of Russian speakers could also use Russian for education and public affairs as well as three small administrative areas where Hungarian, Moldovan and Romanian could be used. Although acting president Turchynov vetoed the repeal bill, the racist parliamentary vote, the violent fascist attacks on people of non-Ukrainian ethnicity and the
terrifying presence of neo- Nazis in the government all combined to convince many of the Russian-speaking people concentrated in the South and East of Ukraine to revolt against the new regime. Their struggle is a just struggle for liberation from a racist regime and quickly won support from the local populations.
In the Crimea peninsula in southern Ukraine whose port city of Sevastopol hosts Russia’s strategic Black Sea Fleet (Russia had been allowed to have control of this base under a 1997 agreement with Ukraine), tens of thousands demonstrated against the new government on the night of the day that the parliament voted to repeal the law on regional languages. Within days pro-Russian supporters took over key government buildings as a majority of Ukrainian soldiers in Crimeadefected to the pro-Russian side. On March 16, an overwhelming majority of the population of the Crimean peninsula voted for independence from Ukraine in an act of self-determination. The next day, Crimea’s parliament, which is dominated by hardline Russian nationalists, declared independence and asked to join Russia. This was accepted by Putin and secured by the Russian military. Although the Ukrainian regime and Western powers continue to demand the return of Crimea to Ukraine, this is empty rhetoric. No one seriously thinks they can wrest Crimea from Russia for the foreseeable future.
In the south-eastern part of Ukraine – centred on the districts of Donetsk and Luhansk that are together known as the Donbass region – a Russian speaking resistance movement also started taking over government buildings after the February right wing coup. They proclaimed a Peoples Republic of Donetsk and a Peoples Republic of Luhansk. However, they were opposed by a military onslaught by the Ukrainian military and Ukrainian volunteer battalions. The latter battalions are largely dominated by fascists, such as the Azov Battalion led by Andriy Biletsky, the leader of the Neo- Nazi, Social National Assembly. The Social National Assembly calls for “struggle for the liberation of the entire White Race” and seeks to “punish severely sexual perversions and any interracial contacts.” The Azov Battalion uses the Wolfsangel (Wolf’s Hook), a favoured symbol of modern Neo-Nazi groups (as the symbol was used by several military units of Hitler’s Nazis) and has attracted to its ranks white supremacists from Sweden, Spain and Italy.
The war has raged on for several months with one side gaining the upper hand and then the other. So far the death toll has exceeded 3,000 people. As we go to press a shaky ceasefire is largely holding with the resistance holding on to chunks of territory in Donestk and Luhansk. The Ukrainian parliament has also just voted to offer the rebel regions regional autonomy. It is too early to evaluate the extent of this offer and the response from the Donbass people. The Russian government has welcomed the offer but as yet a comprehensive political settlement has not been implemented.
As the opposing sides were negotiating the ceasefire, the U.S. stepped up its rhetoric against Russia and then it and the EU announced new sanctions on Russia only days after the ceasefire. It seems that the Ukrainian government’s imperialist patrons were trying to scuttle Ukrainian president Poroshenko’s efforts to negotiate a ceasefire with the Donbass rebels. Washington is prepared to fight to the last drop of Ukrainian blood to curb the influence of its Moscow rival.
The Ukrainian pro-government forces’ assault on the Donbass rebellion was brutal and has caused the deaths of over 1,000 civilians. In order to capture towns, the Kiev regime’s forces have shelled civilian areas and bombarded them with rocket attacks from both ground and air. Especially murderous have been Ukraine’s fascist irregulars. The extent of their barbarity was seen on May 2 in Odessa, a Black Sea port city with a mixed Russian and Ukrainian population. It was there that over a 1,000 fascists, many under the guise of being soccer fans for a local match, held a provocative march through the city denouncing the Southern and Eastern Ukraine-based rebel movements. Among the marchers were large contingents from the Pravy Sektor and over a hundred thugs wearing masks and armed with sticks and shields. After a clash with anti-government activists elsewhere, the fascists marched upon a tent city of anti-government protesters at Kulikovo Field in the centre of Odessa city. They then completely torched the tent camp and forced the terrified protesters to flee into the adjacent Trade Unions House building. What followed was a horrifying massacre. The fascists threw petrol bombs into the second and third stories of the building setting the whole place on fire. As the anti-Kiev activists were being burnt to death, the fascists outside sung the Ukrainian national anthem! Other chanted “burn Colorado, burn” (The New York Times, 4 May 2014) – “Colorado” being a derogatory term for Russian-speaking rebels as it refers to the Colorado potato beetle, striped red and black like the pro-Russian ribbons. Some of those in the building tried to leap down to escape the inferno. Of these some died from the fall but others survived only to be chased down and brutally beaten. The police were complicit in the slaughter. They simply stood aside and watched the pro-Russian activists get murdered and the fascists block the firefighters from using their equipment. Later, 38 of the activists who survived the inferno were outrageously arrested by police as they left the building. In all at least 42 pro- Russian activists were killed at the Trade Unions House building and at least another three were shot dead in the earlier clash. The response of the Kiev regime was initially to blame the activists and later to try and cover up the massacre while cynically shedding crocodile tears “mourning” the dead.
Every atrocity committed by the Ukrainian military and the fascist volunteers against the Russian-speaking minority has only served to strengthen that minority’s separatist feelings. The struggle of the Russian speaking people in the South and East of Ukraine is a just struggle for self determination and thus can be compared in some ways to the Palestinian struggle, the Kurdish separatist struggle in Turkey and the Tamil struggle for a Tamil “Eelam” homeland in Sri Lanka. However, there are also some significant differences with the latter struggles. Firstly, unlike the Tamil and Palestinian struggles, the revolt of the Russian-speaking people in the South and East of Ukraine is not simply that of one ethnic community. Although ethnic Russians are by far the dominant force in the movement, the section of the Ukrainian population whose main language is Russian extends beyond ethnic Russians. According to the 2000 Ukraine census, over five and a half million ethnic Ukrainians speak Russian as their first language. Thus, in the Donetsk Oblast (District), although 57% of the population identify as ethnic Ukrainian, only 24% of the population use Ukrainian as their native language. Russian is also the main language of the majority of the small Belarussian, Jewish, Greek and Tartar communities of Ukraine as well as large minorities of the Bulgarian and Armenian communities. Thus, in photographs of rallies by supporters of the Luhansk Peoples Republic one can see flags of Belarus alongside Russian flags and other Russian nationalist flags.
Secondly, unlike in the West Bank and the Gaza strip which is overwhelmingly Palestinian or the north of Sri Lanka which is overwhelmingly Tamil, the Southern and Eastern parts of Ukraine (other than Crimea which is now part of Russia) are not overwhelmingly ethnic Russian or even Russian speaking. Thus, in the Luhansk Oblast, 58% of the population are ethnic Ukrainians and 30% of the population use Ukrainian as their native language. In Odessa, 46% of the population use Ukrainian as their native language and in Kharkiv 53%. Therefore, the appropriate demand for the movement of the Russian-speaking people is for self-rule with the most deep going autonomy possible. This is what most of the rebels are demanding themselves and apparently what the majority of the population want, although the most hardcore Russian nationalists within the movement sometimes call for accession to Russia.
Thirdly, although the struggle against ethnic and language repression that became sharply posed after the February 21 right wing coup forms the central part of the emergence of the Donbass movement, there are additional factors involved. Some of these factors are directly tied up with the ethnic/ linguistic issue. Thus, the ethnic Russian and other Russian speakers based in the South and East for cultural and patriotic reasons prefer a government that maintains close ties with Russia than the anti-Russia regime that took power on February 21. The Donbass region was a stronghold for Yanukovych’s more Russia-friendly Party of Regions and its removal from power in a coup was therefore most strongly opposed in this part of the country. More interestingly for socialists is the fact that the industrial and thus more proletarian South and East of Ukraine had a greater percentage of people who were favourable to the former Soviet Union and to communism than in other parts of the Ukraine. Despite the reformist nature of the Communist Party of Ukraine (KPU), these sentiments among significant parts of the region’s masses were in part expressed in electoral support for the KPU. In the 2012 parliamentary elections, the KPU won nearly 30% of the vote in the Crimean Peninsula’s main city, Sevastopol, and over 25% of the vote in the Luhansk Oblast. This compares with under 2% of the vote in the western Oblast of Lviv. For those pro-Soviet, subjectively pro-communist individuals in the Southern and Eastern parts of Ukraine who are deeply passionate about the heroic Soviet Red Army’s victory over Nazi Germany, hearing of Soviet war memorials being desecrated, communists being attacked and Lenin statues being torn down by neo-Nazis in Kiev and Western Ukraine encourages not only strong feelings of hostility to the new regime but also, in the absence of an internationalist approach to unite the Ukrainian and Russian speaking toilers in joint revolutionary struggle, the urge to separate from these parts of Ukraine. The exact weight of this factor is hard to gauge from a distance. Unfortunately, as the war has progressed and the atrocities by the Ukrainian military and fascist irregulars mounted, the ethnic/linguistic tensions have hardened. As a result, the dominance of aggressive Russian nationalist elements in the rebel movement has alarmingly increased and less and less Soviet flags and emblems are seen in the rebel political rallies. This is certainly the case in current demonstrations in the Donetsk region, whereas a few Soviet flags were seen in the earlier protests in Odessa in particular.
Fourthly, in the Ukraine war, rival billionaire oligarchs are playing a major, direct role independently of the state power representing their interests in a manner much more overt than in other similar conflicts. Some of these oligarchs are directly funding the pro-government militias and fascist irregulars while others are backing the pro-Russian rebels, while at the same time trying to control their agenda.
Fifthly, unlike the Palestinian and Tamil struggles, the Donbass struggle is being conducted in a region which borders a capitalist power whose main language/ ethnicity is the same as that of the rebel movement and which is providing some support to that movement. This fact does colour things somewhat, even though the rebel movement has not been simply subordinated to Russian interests and thus does remain a progressive movement overall. So, while national rights movements often use the rhetoric of anti-oppression and defensive nationalism, large parts of the Donbass movement leadership use aggressive Russian nationalist and national-supremacist rhetoric reflecting their proximity to a power based on the same ethnic/language group. Until recently, the commander of the Donetsk Peoples Republic was one Igor Girkin (known as “Strelkov”) a reactionary nationalist and monarchist whose hero is a Russian White general (the Whites were the right wing countetrevolutionaries who fought in the 1918-1921 Civil War against the Red communist forces in a failed attempt to overturn the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution). As a result of the character of the Donbass rebel leadership, the neo-Nazi Russian National Unity and clerical-fascist Slavic Union have sent volunteers to support the Donbass rebels as have the Serbian Chetniks (the Chetniks are right wing monarchists who were defeated by Tito’s communist partisans). The Donbass rebellion has also won the enthusiastic support of the Hungarian neo- Nazi Jobbik Party and the fascist British National Party. Most disturbingly, elements of the Donbass pro-Russian forces have been accused of committing horrific racist violence against the region’s Romani (Gypsy) minority as well as attacks on church goers who don’t attend Russian Orthodox-affiliated churches. All this is not only terrifying for the non-Russian communities in the Donbass but is harmful to what is overall a just struggle against racist/linguistic discrimination and repression of the Russian-speaking people of the region. For one, it repels the many pro-Soviet, anti-fascist working class people in the Donetsk and Luhansk districts from supporting the rebel movement. Secondly, it drives the Ukrainian-speaking masses in the West of Ukraine into the arms of the reactionary Kiev regime, as the excesses of the rebels recalls to them the subjugation of Ukrainian people in pre-Soviet, Tsarist Russia. Therefore, it is urgent for there to be a political struggle to replace the reactionary nationalist leadership of the Donbass masses with an internationalist, pro-working class leadership. Such a leadership would pose the struggle solely as a struggle against racist and capitalist oppression, would completely reject great power Russian nationalism, would stand resolutely in defence of the well-being and rights of the region’s Romani, Jewish, Ukrainian-speaking and other minorities, would drive out fascists from the movement, would appeal to the class interests of the Ukrainian-speaking workers in the rest of the country in opposing the regime’s onslaught against the region and would fight for the revolutionary unity of Ukrainian-speaking and Russian-speaking workers in the struggle against the capitalist exploiters of all ethnicities.
The objectively progressive nature of the anti-regime struggle in the South and East of Ukraine has meant that, although it’s still only a relatively small component of the movement as a whole, there has been leftist participation in it. Active in Odesssa and Kharkiv is the Borotba group which is pro-Soviet and openly describes itself as Marxist-Leninist and revolutionary. Borotba correctly denounces the November 2013 to February 2014 then opposition movement for bringing to power a very right wing, “neo-liberal and nationalistic government”, while correctly also opposing the previous capitalist Yanukovych government and the capitalist Putin government in Russia. Borotba members have courageously withstood fascist attacks and state repression and have today been driven underground. Borotba comrade Andrey Brazhevsky was murdered in the fascist attack on the Trade Unions House building in Odessa when, after jumping off the burning building, fascists beat him to death with sticks. From this distance we cannot give a broader appraisal of the politics of this group. Unfortunately, although the group has expressed strong opposition to both Ukrainian and Russian fascists, a Borotba leader founded a joint committee for the “Liberation of Odessa” with the Russian bourgeois Rodina party and the Russian fascist party Slavic Union.
Despite the dominance of right wing Russian nationalists in the Donbass rebel leadership, the struggle of the Russian-speaking people in the Donetsk and Luhansk districts is still, objectively, a just struggle against racist/ linguistic discrimination and repression and, what is more, includes to some degree a progressive, pro-Soviet hostility to the desecration of Soviet war memorials, the presence of neo-Nazis in the Kiev regime and the tearing down of Lenin statues in western Ukraine. That is why the international working class movement must defend the just anti-regime struggle of the people of the Donbass and demand the right to the broadest self-rule for the people of this region.
The Ukrainian working class outside the Donbass, including the Ukrainian-speaking masses, must especially take up this cause. Only by positively opposing the anti-Russian chauvinism promoted by the regime can they unite on a class basis and focus on the struggle against the capitalist exploiters – those true enemies of the workers of all ethnicities who are consigning the masses to high unemployment and poverty and whose regime is preparing to unleash EU and IMF-dictated austerity that would hit working class people with social service cutbacks, price rises and still deeper job losses. Such a perspective is possible even given the right wing, nationalistic climate in Ukraine and the polarising effect of the bitter and bloody war. It is striking that wives, mothers and other relatives of those drafted into Kiev’s war on the Donbass have staged a series of militant protests against conscription and in many cases against the war itself. The protests began in July in response to a government decision to announce a new wave of conscription orders. The protests took hold initially in the Chernivtsi region, a heavily ethnic Romanian region, near the Romanian border. There protesters blocked roads in protests at conscription orders given to 280 young men in the Ostryzja village. “We want peace, we really do not need war. Ukraine must have peace,” was the typical sentiment of the protesters. Soon the protests spread including importantly to ethnic Ukrainian regions as well. From the Obukhivs’kyi district near Kiev to the village of Hamaliivka near Lviv to the villages of Rakoshyno and Znyatsevo, near the border of Slovakia and Hungary, anti-war and anti-conscription protesters have blocked roads. Among the slogans and retorts of the demonstrators have been, “‘Send call-up notices to the children of the higher-ups!’, ‘Return our children to us,’ ‘Stop the bloodshed’ and ‘Go fight your own wars.’” On July 22, farmers protesting the conscription of their children in the town of Bohorodchany in Ivano- Frankivsk Oblast, in south-west Ukraine, attacked the military registration office and the government premises and burned conscription documents. On July 25, in the shipbuilding port of Mykolaiv, east of Odessa, mothers and wives of soldiers braved state repression to block the Varvarovsky Bridge over the Bug River for three days until police violently broke up the action and arrested several protesters.
Such courageous protests present an opportunity for leftists to intervene to both show solidarity and to explain the need to not only oppose Kiev’s war but to defend the just struggle of the Russian-speaking people of the Donbass. Furthermore, in ethnically mixed and heavily industrial cities like Kharkiv and Dnipropetrovsk there is also an opportunity for leftists to intervene to bridge the ethnic divide and to mobilise actions in defence of the embattled Donbass people as an integral part of the fight against the capitalist oligarchs. Kharkiv and Dnipropetrovsk are Ukraine’s second and third largest cities, both of which have not been directly subsumed in the polarising war and both of which have Ukrainian and Russian workers toiling together in large workplaces. In Dnipropetrovsk, the connection between the necessity to defend the Donbass struggle and the struggle against capitalist exploitation is especially apparent, given that the governor of the district, the stridently anti-rebel Ihor Kolomoyskyi is also a capitalist billionaire who happens to be Ukraine’s second richest man.
DON’T LET ABBOTT DIVERT US FROM TARGETING OUR MAIN ENEMY:THE AUSTRALIAN REGIME AND THE CAPITALISTS THAT THEY SERVE
At present, one of sildenafil cipla the best supportive medicines, Kamagra 100mg has gained the universal popularity by preventing men from more of ED (Erectile Dysfunction) pressures and quickly bringing them back to your house for an enjoyable night in. Erectile dysfunction is not a disorder which is erectile dysfunction. generico cialis on line But they can be treated with Forzest tablets, vacuum constriction device, injectable medicines, Kamagra tablets, penile implants and sales uk viagra here other therapies. It is opined by experts that no matter super generic viagra how mild a drug is, one must always get in a word with a doctor to ensure safety. Whatwehaveatthispointintimeisnot an inter-imperialist war between the NATO powers and Russia or even a war between Kiev and Moscow. The Russian-speaking rebels in the Donbass region are not, at the moment, simply acting as Moscow’s proxies. The Moscow government has a different agenda to the rebels. The Russian-speaking people of the Donbass want to protect themselves from discrimination and a very right-wing government whereas Moscow wants to promote its great power capitalist ambitions. Indeed, many of the rebels are angry that Russia has not supported them adequately. Notably, when Donetsk and Luhansk organised referendums demanding self-rule, Putin tried to pressure the local leaderships to delay the referenda.
What we have today is a just, defensive struggle of the Russian-speaking people of the Donbass in the context of great power capitalist tensions between the U.S. and Australia on the one hand and Russia on the other. The tasks for the international workers’ movement and left that flow from this is to, on the one hand, defend the just struggle of the Donbass rebels and, on the other, to oppose as the mainenemy one’s “own” capitalist rulers in the capitalist political standoff. That means that socialists in Australia must oppose first and foremost the sanctions on Russia and the anti-Russia propaganda of Canberra and Washington and Co. We must point out the irrationality of the Western claim that Russia invaded Crimea when a massive 96% of voters in Crimea opted to join Russia in the March 16 referendum that had a high voter turnout of 83.1%. We should also challenge the claim that large numbers of Russian troops have entered Eastern Ukraine to fight alongside Donbass rebels when, in fact, there is no actual hard evidence of it whatsoever. Indeed, if there was such a huge direct Russian military role in the Donbass as Washington, Canberra and Co. claim then the Ukrainian forces, as formidable as they are, would not have been able to achieve the major victories that they did in their late July offensive into an area where much of the local population is hostile to them. The Kiev regime’s war later ran into difficulties not because of Russia but because many of its own troops either do not want to fight this war or, if they do, are not enthusiastic enough about the war to fight with the necessary conviction. With many regular Ukrainian troops half-hearted about fighting, the Kiev regime had to rely on the fascist irregulars – drunk as they are with rabid nationalism and hatred of Russians – to be in the frontlines of many difficult battles. Thousands of regular Ukrainian soldiers have, in fact, deserted. Some of these have taken asylum in Russia. Some have even defected to the rebels. The fact is that despite the intense nationalism of the post-Soviet period, many Ukrainian soldiers, a large percentage of whom are conscripts, are shaped by the stories that their grandparents have told them about the Soviet Red Army’s heroic struggle against Nazi Germany. Although they are still indoctrinated in the pro-capitalist and nationalist traditions of a capitalist army, it is difficult for such soldiers to fight with much enthusiasm a war in which they are taking orders from a government that includes neo-Nazis and in which they have to fight alongside neo-Nazi irregulars. Indeed, Ukrainian president Poroshenko ended up agreeing to a ceasefire with the resistance and offering autonomy for the Donbass not because of fear of Russia but because of fear of the breakdown of morale in his own army and fear at the militancy of anti-conscription protests on the home front.
We must also expose the sickening hypocrisy of the U.S., British and Australian rulers when they attack Russia’s supposed “incursion” into Ukraine. It is these same Western imperialist rulers that caused the deaths of over a million people in their brutal invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. It was the NATO powers that killed tens of thousands of Libyans in their 2011 air and special forces campaign to spearhead the overthrow of the Gaddafi government. Today, the U.S., backed by its allies like Australia, grossly violate Syria’s sovereignty by bombing (supposed) ISIS targets inside Syria without the Syrian government’s permission – all as part of a broader plan for regime change in Syria. And they have the hide to attack Russia over its alleged, but completely unproved, actions in eastern Ukraine!
Now, of course, understanding that the main enemy of the Australian working class are the Australian capitalist rulers and their senior partners does not mean that they are the only enemy. As Marxists-Leninists we understand that the ruling class of every capitalist power is our enemy. Therefore, capitalist rulers of the West’s rival, Russia, are also an enemy. Putin heads a right wing capitalist government that oversees exploitation of workers, repression of leftists, brutal police attacks against migrants and Russians of non-European ethnicities and persecution of gay and transexual people. Indeed, Putin has much in common with Tony Abbott! However, it is primarily the job of the Russian working class to oppose the predatory ambitions of their “own” rulers just as it is primarily the duty of the Ukrainian toiling masses to fight against the murderous, fascist-infested, capitalist regime that oversees their exploitation. The class struggle in these countries does, indeed, matter and should not be ignored for the sake of the “big picture” – as it is, in fact, a significant part of the “big picture.” Ukraine and Russia together have a population of over 190 million and as both countries are industrialised, they have some big centres of industrial working class concentration. The strategic importance of these countries to the struggle for world socialism is highlighted by the fact that Russia is the second strongest military power in the world, the world’s largest country by area, arguably the pre-eminent world space power and closely rivals the U.S. in nuclear warfare capability. Just as importantly, given that the counterrevolutionary destruction of socialistic rule in the ex-USSR was such a massive propaganda windfall for the capitalist rulers of the world – used by them to claim that “communism is dead” and capitalism is inevitable – the revolutionary socialist restoration of workers state power in any of these countries would be a terrific propaganda and moral victory for the fight for international working class liberation.
However, for Australian leftists to today focus their attack on the crimes of the Russian ruling class in the context of the current great power capitalist tensions only serves to support the agenda of the Australian capitalists and to enhance their legitimacy. It would push our audience into thinking that Abbott and Shorten are right on major world issues like Ukraine and so maybe we should start listening to them on domestic issues as well. Yet, focusing on the crimes of the Russian ruling class and retailing Western imperialism’s propaganda against Russia is what the various reformist socialist groups in Australia do. Their orientation can be summarised as: the main enemy is the rival of my “own” bourgeoisie! In carrying out such a perspective, these socialist groups are serving to bolster the credentials of the Australian capitalist ruling class and thus act to undermine the class struggle against them.
Some Western leftists, as an excuse for taking the more socially acceptable position of favouring the ally of their own bourgeoisie, argue that Ukraine should be defended as a weaker country than powerful Russia. However, such a stance is very wrong. Firstly, Ukrainian capitalist rulers are at least to some extent acting as a proxy of Western imperialism. Secondly Ukraine is itself not a weak semi-colony. Although Ukraine later gave up its nuclear weapons, as the second largest republic of the former USSR, Ukraine inherited from the ex-Soviet Union a large, well-trained and well-equipped military. Although capitalist restoration devastated its military and industrial strength, Ukraine retains an advanced independent arms industry. It manufactures, among other goods, ballistic missiles, submarines and tanks and is a major arms exporter. Ukraine has also retained some of the highly skilled technical personnel as well as the highly educated workforce of Soviet times and has the fourth highest number of IT professionals in the world. It has also retained a portion of the powerful and high-tech industrial plants built in Soviet times. This is indicated by its level of steel production, which is commonly used worldwide as a gauge of industrial capacity, since steel is the base material for much heavy and medium manufacturing as well as most infrastructure construction. Ukraine, although only being the 31st most populous country in the world is the globe’s 10th largest steel producer. Ukraine also has a sizeable automotive industry as well as a space vehicle industry and is one of the few countries in the world able to design and produce a complete aircraft. All this means that Ukraine does not have to accept capital from overseas capitalist powers simply in order to get access to the technology that it needs. And it has sufficient military deterrent to make it costly and risky (although, of course, not anywhere near impossible) for a foreign power to use military threat to force it into repaying debts, for example. In summary, 75 years of industrial, educational and military development as part of the Soviet workers state transformed the Ukraine from a weak nation subjugated by Russian imperialism in Tsarist times into a country that even after being decimated by capitalist counterrevolution would be difficult for Russia, or anyone else for that matter, to turn into a semi-colony. Over 22 years of capitalist chaos since the destruction of the USSR has meant that Ukraine today is debt ridden and is being dictated to and bullied by the IMF and Western banks but then so are even imperialist countries like Spain and Italy. Yet, today Ukraine’s prized enterprises like the Antonov aerospace company and the giant PA Yuzhmash, a producer of rockets, satellites, buses and trams, remain in domestic Ukrainian hands. Furthermore, although there is considerable Russian investment – often via Cypriot banks – in Ukraine’s financial and service sector, other than for Russian-owned resource giant TNK-BP and the part-Russian ownership in Ukraine’s major mobile phone operator Kyivstar, most of the biggest firms operating in Ukraine are domestically owned (most often by fabulously wealthy oligarchs).
The Western imperialist huffing and puffing against Russia is not only about Russia itself. The Western rulers are using the myth of the Russian bogeyman that they have created as an excuse to bolster their militaries and to exercise their imperialist political and diplomatic muscles for future use against other targets as well. This month’s NATO summit used the supposed “Russian aggression” in Ukraine as justification for creating a “Spearhead” rapid reaction force of several thousand troops ready to deploy anywhere in the world in less than 48 hours. The summit also enshrined a commitment by member states to significantly increase defence budgets. For its part, the Australian rulers used the horror of the MH17 plane disaster as an excuse to send Australian Federal Police (AFP) officers tramping around the crash site in war torn Eastern Ukraine. If they were really interested in recovery of the dead bodies and determining the cause of the disaster they would have sent pathologists and air crash investigators after diplomatically and politely negotiating with the Donetsk rebels who were holding the territory. Instead, they sent in cops after they and their Western counterparts made aggressive demands upon the Donetsk rebels. For the Australian government, demanding the “right” to send in cops to an area controlled by a force – the Donetsk separatists – that they oppose was a chance for some good old fashioned imperialist bullying (how would the Australian regime like it if the Chinese government was this aggressive and demanded that Chinese police take over sites in Australian cities whenever a redneck racist bashes or murders a Chinese student in Australia). This was a chance for the Australian state forces to show that they have the right to maraud anywhere they choose. For the Australian ruling class this exercising of imperialist muscles was mainly in order to prepare for future expeditions in the Asia-Pacific region. In recent years the AFP has been deployed to lord it over the peoples of the Solomon Islands, East Timor, Papua New Guinea and Bougainville. However, they are quite prepared to also unleash their state forces in operations around the globe to support their U.S. godfather. The Liberal/ National Coalition government, with Labor’s full support, sure couldn’t wait to send troops to the Middle East to support the U.S.A’s latest military adventure there.
The most important reason for all this Western imperialist diplomatic and military exercising – including NATO’s planned military build-up – is to target not so much Russia but China, socialistic China that is. When Clive Palmer recently ranted against China and the Communist Chinese government he was, in fact, expressing the real opinion of the entire Australian capitalist class. The trouble is that this capitalist class is simultaneously relying on China’s booming state-owned enterprises to keep on buying enough of Australia’s exports to hold up the Australian economy. So other Australian politicians publicly told Palmer to shut it while no doubt wanting to whisper in his ear, “we’re with you brother.” After all, with the enthusiastic support of both the ALP and the Liberals, the U.S. has 1,300 troops stationed in Darwin which are squarely aimed against China and her socialistic North Korean ally. The continued presence of a socialistic state in China, however corrupted and weakened by a degree of capitalist penetration, is an obstacle to the imperialist designs to turn China into a huge sweatshop for imperialist exploitation. Meanwhile, the presence of a socialistic world power is an obstacle to imperialism running amok in the world. These are the reasons why the capitalist powers are building their forces to put pressure on China. Equally, it is the reason why theinternationalworkingclass must urgently rally to the defence of the Chinese workers state, however deformed from the ideal that it may be.
The Abbott government has also been using the MH17 disaster and the events in Ukraine for domestic purposes. Abbott and Labor Opposition leader Shorten claimed to feel intense grief for the pain borne by families and friends of the Australians killed aboard MH17. In truth these pro-capitalist politicians only ever feel true solidarity for some Australians – those in the big end of town! They both certainly don’t feel any sympathy for the close to 500 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who have been killed in state custody over the last 35 years. Both their parties running state and federal governments have overseen brutal police and prison guard terror against Aboriginal people. They definitely do not feel any sympathy for low-income, single mothers either. At the start of last year, Shorten’s ALP, when in government under Gillard, drove 80,000 low-income single parents and their children into dire poverty and in some cases even homelessness when they cruelly slashed their payments – a move maintained by the current Abbott government. And Abbott could not care less for unemployed youth – as he plans to drive unemployed people younger than thirty into starvation by cutting off their dole payments for six months per year. Yet Abbott cynically manipulated people’s genuine sympathy for the victims of MH17 to gain a boost in opinion polls by portraying himself as a person who cares for and stands up for the interests of Australians.
The Coalition government’s tough talk over MH17 and denunciations of Russia and the Donbass-based rebels are, however, not purely about gaining electoral advantage. As with Abbott’s ranting backing Australia’s war moves in the Middle East, the focussing on an external adversary is meant to unite the population on a nationalist basis – into a “Team Australia” as Abbott calls it. Except that in this so-called team, a small number of team members – that is, the capitalist tycoons likes Andrew Forrest, Gina Rinehart, Clive Palmer, James Packer and Frank Lowy – are exploiting the majority of the team: the working class. The idea that we are all together as Australians against the external adversary – whether that be Russia or ISIS – is meant to make the exploited masses accept their oppression for the sake of the “team.” Abbott and Co. want us to hold the hands of the corporate bigwigs while the latter kick us in the guts. He wants public housing tenants to consider the housing authorities that are booting them out of their homes and the greedy developers that are buying them up as part of their “team.” This government is also foisting upon working class people loyalty to “Team Australia” in order to make them accept, for the sake of the “team,” a federal budget that will slash payments for the unemployed, make the masses pay for doctors’ visits and further reduce funding for Aboriginal services all the while cutting taxes for mining billionaires.
Yet, even though Shorten’s ALP and Adam Bandt’s Greens claim opposition to some aspects of the budget and would seemingly have an interest in stopping Abbott’s attempts to divert mass hostility to the budget, they too have joined in creating the myth of the Russian bogeyman. Why is this? Although the ALP rests on the working class it is opposed to militant class struggle and instead sees improvements coming through collaboration with the capitalists. Thus, it too wants to tame class struggle by tying the masses to their exploiters through the notion of a common “national interest” uniting all Australians. The Greens, who are based on the liberal/ progressive middle class and students, also reject class struggle. Both the ALP and Greens, whose strategy for progressive social change is based on getting elected to parliament, are desperate to win the blessing of the wealthy capitalists whose funding, economic clout and media dominance greatly shapes who can win elections. Thus, both the ALP and Greens are always keen to prove to the capitalist elite that they are “responsible” parties committed to doing what is best for Australian capitalism – like standing alongside Australian imperialism’s U.S. senior partner in the Ukraine conflict. However, those who understand that the only way to advance the interests of working class people is through class struggle against the ruling class must oppose every scheme to tie the masses to their exploiters on the basis of a fictitious “national interest.” Down with the ruling class’ attempt to create the spectre of a Russian bogeyman! Don’t let them use the threat of the, indeed thoroughly reactionary, ISIS movement to divert the working class from the central task of opposing the attacks of the Australian capitalists – from their imperialist expedition to the Middle East to their drive to further degrade workers’ standard of living and access to social services.
SUFFERING,RACISMAND CHAOS IN UKRAINE: A DIRECT RESULT OF CAPITALIST COUNTER-REVOLUTION
TomanyolderUkrainiansandRussianswhorememberlifeinthedaysoftheformerSovietUnion,thecurrentwar,economicchaos and fascist rampages are especially hard to stomach. Although things were not perfect, in the heyday of the USSR from the 1950s to the early 1980s not only was there no nationalist bloodletting but fascists barely existed let alone dared to show their colours in public – certainly they were not able to rampage on the streets and gain ministries in government as they do now in Ukraine! Despite a moderate degree of Russian-centredness of leading elements of the ruling Soviet bureaucracy and at various times this bureaucracy making concessions to Russian nationalism, the socialistic USSR in its prime really was a land of the friendship of peoples. Many international students from Asia, Africa and the Middle East studied in the USSR on scholarships or for nominal fees. They were treated with generous hospitality and genuine warmth. However, after the capitalist counterrevolution that destroyed the USSR, the life of international students in both Russia and Ukraine has been one of fear and terror. Dark-skinned international students and migrants are regularly harassed and abused and countless numbers have been murdered or brutally bashed by fascist gangs. In Russia, fascist gangs are notorious for going out on nightly “street cleansing” operations where they premeditatedly bash or murder dark-skinned immigrants, stall holders from the Caucasus, Romani people (Gypsies), people from Central Asia, gays, people with long hair and anarchists. These fascists have committed over 1,000 premeditated murders in Russia in the last 10 years -including those of 200 international students!
The creation of the Soviet workers state itself involved a conscious struggle against racism and national oppression. Tsarist Russia was an empire centred on the ethnic Russians (then known as “Great Russians”) that brutally oppressed the non-Russian nations including Ukraine. As an essential part of uniting the working class of all ethnicities Lenin’s Bolsheviks insisted on the need for the ethnic Russian working class to strongly defend the rights of the downtrodden non-Russian peoples and to oppose the Russian fascist Black Hundreds group:
Amidst the alarms and turmoil of the struggle for existence, for a bare livelihood, the Russian workers cannot and must not forget the yoke of national oppression under which the tens and tens of millions of “subject peoples” inhabiting Russia are groaning. The ruling nation–the Great Russians–constitute about 45 per cent of the total population of the Empire. Out of every 100 inhabitants, over 50 belong to “subject peoples”.
And the conditions of life of this vast population are even harsher than those of the Russians. The policy of oppressing nationalities is one of dividing nations. At the same time it is a policy of systematic corruption of the people’s minds. The Black Hundreds’ plans are designed to foment antagonism among the different nations, to poison the minds of the ignorant and downtrodden masses. Pick up any Black-Hundred newspaper and you will find that the persecution of non-Russians, the sowing of mutual distrust between the Russian peasant, the Russian petty bourgeois and the Russian artisan on the one hand, and the Jewish, Finnish, Polish, Georgian and Ukrainian peasants, petty bourgeois and artisans on the other, is meat and drink to the whole of this Black-Hundred gang.
But the working class needs unity, not division. It has no more bitter enemy than the savage prejudices and superstitions which its enemies sow among the ignorant masses. The oppression of “subject peoples” is a double-edged weapon. It cuts both ways– against the “subject peoples” and against the Russian people.
As part of this struggle, Lenin trained the ethnic Russian working class to physically smash the fascist Black Hundreds and to defend the right to self-determination of the oppressed peoples in imperialist Russia, like the Ukrainians:
Accursed tsarism made the Great Russians executioners of the Ukrainian people, and fomented in them [the Ukrainian people] a hatred for those who even forbade Ukrainian children to speak and study in their native tongue.
Russia’s revolutionary democrats, if they want to be truly revolutionary and truly democratic, must break with that past, must regain for themselves, for the workers and peasants of Russia, the brotherly trust of the Ukrainian workers and peasants. This cannot be done without full recognition of the Ukraine’s rights, including the right to free secession.
We do not favour the existence of small states. We stand for the closest union of the workers of the world against ‘their own’ capitalists and those of all other countries. But for this union to be voluntary, the Russian worker, who does not for a moment trust The Russian or the Ukrainian bourgeoisie in anything, now stands for the right of the Ukrainians to secede, without imposing his friendship upon them, but striving to win their friendship by treating them as an equal, as an ally and brother in the struggle for socialism.
– The Ukraine, V.I. Lenin (1914), https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/jun/28.htm
Through such a policy the Bolsheviks were able to unite the toilers of different nationalities in a socialist revolution that shook the world. Lenin and Trotsky’s Bolsheviks taught the Soviet masses to understand that their interests were completely synonymous with those of the toilers of the whole world and to see the October 1917 Russian revolution as the first step in the world revolution. However, the communist parties in other parts of the world were too weak and too recently formed to take advantage of the revolutionary wave that swept Europe after the October Revolution. As a result the young Soviet workers state was isolated and then devastated following the bitter, but ultimately victorious 1918-1921 Civil War against the defeated capitalists who waged a violent bid to recapture power with the assistance of invading armies from fourteen capitalist countries. Under these conditions of isolation and scarcity a more rightist, less revolutionary faction of the Soviet Communist party grabbed political power in the mid-1920s promising they would give the masses a respite from the tumult of revolutionary struggles by establishing “peaceful coexistence” with world imperialism. The new leaders rested on the more conservative workers and the rural peasants and especially on the governmental/administrative bureaucracy. Gradually they began securing some material privileges for the emerging bureaucratic elite which they became an organic part of. They murderously persecuted the Trotskyist Left Opposition and countless other communists who spoke out (or even were as seen as potentially speaking out in the future) against the course away from Leninist egalitarianism and internationalism. However, the bureaucracy had to base itself on the progressive, socialist economic relations centred on public ownership that sprung from the 1917 revolution.
Furthermore, although the bureaucracy often (with some important exceptions) pushed Lenin’s perspective of supporting the international socialist revolution down to the second row in the vain hope of achieving peaceful coexistence with imperialism, the Soviet masses remained imbued with Soviet patriotism – that is, a strong pride in the socialistic character of the USSR and in its principle of friendship among the different peoples of the multi-ethnic republic. It was through this Soviet patriotism that the Soviet masses, with incredible heroism and at great cost, defeated Nazi Germany in World War II. Meanwhile, the USSR’s friendship of peoples was secured by its economic system based on common ownership and co-operation between people to achieve central plans. This brought people together, in contrast to the system of individual ownership of capitalism which tears people apart.
Nevertheless, over time the imperialists subjected the Soviet workers state to immense military, economic and political pressure. This pressure was at least 50 times what capitalist Russia is being subjected to today by its Western rivals. The ruling bureaucrats in the USSR would respond to these threats when they directly manifested themselves within the USSR. However, these Soviet leaders who retained great authority over the international workers movement through being the heads of the world’s first and most powerful workers state, held back the most powerful counterpunch to the capitalist states threatening the USSR – the revolutionary workers within these capitalist countries themselves. Instead, they extended this arm of the international workers movement to shake the hands of the imperialists in friendship and offer them “peaceful coexistence.” The capitalists powers responded by first grabbing this arm, then twisting it and finally snapping it in half. Panicked, the Soviet bureaucracy also offered the other arm to the imperialists. The imperialists did the same to that arm as well. With the USSR and the international workers movement thus weakened, the Soviet leadership from the time of Gorbachev’s ascendancy in the mid-1980s began backpedalling in the face of the imperialist threat. Gorbachev allowed greater freedom for capitalist counterrevolutionary political forces to operate and introduced right wing perestroika market reforms. All this created a new layer of petty capitalists – and associated with them a sizeable layer of pro-capitalist intellectuals – demanding more “rights” for capitalism. They pushed the bureaucracy to the right and with each new concession this counterrevolutionary layer became more powerful and more demanding. Eventually, when these counterrevolutionaries with tremendous backing from Washington, London, Canberra and co. made their bids for power in the ex-USSR and Eastern Europe, the ruling bureaucracies committed their ultimate betrayal of socialism when they (although not all that happy about what was happening) simply stood aside and allowed the pro-capitalist forces to storm in and take power. Even those bureaucrats that did try to mount some form of resistance – like the top Soviet leaders who staged the so-called coup against Gorbachev in August 1991 in opposition to his counterrevolutionary course – capitulated at the first sign of any significant opposition.
Some in the bureaucracy went further and broke away from the mainstream of the Soviet apparatus to become direct agents of the capitalist counterrevolution – like Russian counterrevolution leader Boris Yeltsin and like Putin, who was an adviser to counterrevolutionary Leningrad mayor, Anatoly Sobchak, during the counterrevolution. Others like the first president of post-Soviet capitalist Ukraine, Leonid Kravchuk, remained with the mainstream of the bureaucracy and then promptly jumped over from being an administrator of a workers state to an administrator of a capitalist state. There were, to be sure, a great many in the bureaucratic establishment, including officers in the Red Army, who were incensed and bewildered at the counterrevolution. These elements were either purged from their positions or retired. However, even though the period from November 1991 to March 1992 saw mass pro- Soviet rallies, proudly, pro-Soviet individuals within the bureaucracy were unable to mount a decisive challenge to the counterrevolution because they lacked any perspective of relying for their strength on the working class masses. It was the Soviet working class that could have stopped the capitalist counterrevolution. However, lacking a genuine communist leadership and having its independent initiative degraded by having been excluded from a vanguard role in active politics for decades by the bureaucracy, the working class did not take the initiative to mobilise decisive action to stop the counterrevolution. This was despite the fact that major portions of the Soviet working class were very worried about the ascendancy of the pro-capitalist forces.
Although the decisive events in the counterrevolution that destroyed the USSR were centred on Russia there were significant counterrevolutionary movements in other republics as well. In Ukraine, Belarus, the Baltic states, Moldova, Azerbaijan and elsewhere, “Popular Fronts” were formed to push for independence from the USSR. These were nothing like the national liberation movements that fought against the Great Russian chauvinism and subjugation of Tsarist times. In Soviet times, although there was a degree of Russian centredness on the part of the bureaucracy, the non-Russian masses did not face significant national oppression. The nationalist “Popular Fronts” in Ukraine and elsewhere were really simply capitalist restorationist movements that used the cover of national independence to promote a call to break from the socialistic USSR and establish capitalist rule. These movements were fed by Gorbachev’s perestroika market reforms which by turning away from the even, planned distribution of resources between different republics and regions led to greater competition and income differentials between different republics and thereby exacerbated national divisions. The “Popular Fronts” harked back to anti-Soviet or non-Soviet national figures of their respective republics and insisted on the exclusive use of their national languages as opposed to the bilingualism encouraged in the USSR. The aggressive nationalism, anti-communism and hostility to the use of the Russian language of the current Ukrainian ruling parties is really an extension of the politics of the Ukrainian Popular Front (known as Rukh) that fought to undermine socialistic rule in the last years of the USSR.
If reactionary nationalism was used as a tool to promote counterrevolution in the various Soviet republics, the effect of the counterrevolution itself was to increase this nationalism many fold. Counterrevolution saw these republics go from being areas of zero unemployment in the mid-1980s to being regions of massive unemployment. In Ukraine capitalist restoration caused its GDP and its industrial production to collapse by a stunning 60%! Under conditions of such scarcity, nationalism flourished. Furthermore, the corrupt new rulers had to whip up reactionary nationalism as a matter of their own survival. Capitalist restoration had been such an all- round disaster – causing immiseration of the masses, an alarming drop in health levels and a massive increase in crime and street violence. Only by offering the masses the “solace” that they were part of building a strong, new nation and, what is more, standing up to national adversaries could the new ruling class ward off the
prospect of being toppled from power. In countries like Ukraine, these new capitalist rulers have stirred up such reactionary nationalism in part by pointing to the ambitions of capitalist Russia and by thus appealing to real fears among “their people” that they would be again subjugated under the thumb of Russia as in the old Tsarist times. However, the lasting effect of some aspects of Soviet development in these countries and the equalisation of development among the different republics of the USSR through central planning mean that it is now not easy (although not impossible in the least developed of the former Soviet republics) for capitalist Russia to replicate the Great Russian tyranny last seen in Tsarist times.
WHO IS TO BLAME FOR THE MH17 DISASTER AND THE CRISIS IN UKRAINE?
If we now step back and consider who is, ultimately, to blame for the horrific crashof MH17 – regardless of who actually fired the projectiles that downed the aircraft –first and foremost responsibility must fall upon the imperialist ruling classes fromtheUnitedStatestoAustraliatoJapan,GermanyandBritain.Theymobilisedmassivefinancial,military and diplomatic power in order to squeeze the socialistic USSR hardenoughtotriggerher internal collapse and, consequently, create the misery, racismandchaosoutofwhichthecurrentwarintheDonbass– and, thus, the downing ofMH17 – grew. The Western imperialists also orchestrated this February’s right wingcoupthatbroughtinthenewhardlinenationalisticregimethatprovokedtheDonbassconflict. Also, major responsibility for the current tragedies lies with the likes of BorisYeltsinand the Ukrainian Popular Front who, on the ground, spearheaded the capitalistcounterrevolutionsinRussia,UkraineandtheotherformerSovietrepublics.Thenthereis the direct responsibility of the political heirs of the Ukrainian Popular Front – fromconservativeslikeYatsenyukandthe Fatherland Party to outright fascists like TyahnybokandYarosh– who conducted the February right wing coup and then unleashed brutal repression against the peoples of the Donbass.
Putin has some responsibility too but less than the Western imperialists and their right wing Ukrainian allies. Furthermore, Putin’s main fault lies in having acted as a partner of Washington, Canberra and Co. in being part of the imperialist-orchestrated, Yeltsin-Sobchak counterrevolution that destroyed socialistic rule in the former USSR and thus paved the path for the emergence of the reactionary Ukrainian nationalism of the February coup regime and outright fascists like Svoboda and Pravy Sektor. Then, later, as the chief administrator of capitalist Russia, Putin oversaw the continued immiseration of the Russian masses while spewing reactionary nationalism to help maintain capitalist rule: both of which have helped to raise large fascist movements within Russia. In turn, the abundance of vile Russian fascists and the great power nationalism of the mainstream Russian ruling class has indirectly bolstered the strength of Ukrainian nationalists and fascists by allowing them to exploit – and hysterically incite – fears of Russian domination.
The criminal role of the Western-based social democrats in the tragedy that has unfolded in Ukraine cannot be underestimated either. These social democrats not only supported the right wing February coup in Ukraine but throughout the Cold War fully supported their own ruling class’ efforts to destroy the Soviet and East European workers states. Here in Australia, pro-ALP union leaders treacherously lined up our workers’ unions behind the anti-communist – and, thus, anti-working class – Solidarnosc “union” which with the ardent backing of the Vatican and right wing Western leaders like Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher unleashed the counterrevolutionary wave that toppled the workers states in Eastern Europe and the former USSR. Meanwhile, the Hawke-Keating ALP government that came to office in 1983 aggressively supported the U.S.-led Cold War against the USSR both through hosting joint U.S-Australia military bases in Pine Gape and elsewhere and through politically backing the various anti-Soviet movements from the women-hating Afghan mujahedin (out of which the Taliban emerged) to the Ukrainian and Baltic “Popular Fronts” to the Yeltsin- Sobchak counterrevolutionaries in Russia. Right behind the ALP’s Cold War drive were the reformist, far-left groups. Most enthusiastic in their opposition to the Soviet workers state was the Cliffite, International Socialist Organisation (ISO) – the parent organisation of both the Socialist Alternative and Solidarity groups. The ISO wielded the bogus theory that the Soviet and East European states were in fact “state capitalist” in order to justify giving enthusiastic support to all the counterrevolutionary movements. When the openly counterrevolutionary Yeltsin forces grabbed governmental power in Russia after opposing a timid, pro-Soviet coup against the sellout Gorbachev and anti-communist mobs then went around Moscow tearing down statues of Russian Revolutionary leaders, and while Western mainstream newspapers cheered that “Communism is Dead,” this parent group of Socialist Alternative and Solidarity chimed in with: “‘Communism is dead’ …. It’s a fact that should have every socialist rejoicing” (Socialist, September 1991). The Democratic Socialist Party (the DSP has now become the Socialist Alliance) was little better, even though, unlike the Cliffites, the DSP recognised in theory that the USSR was a workers state. Although the DSP took a progressive position of opposing the CIA-backed mujahedin fundamentalists in Afghanistan (a good position which the Socialist Alliance appears to be embarrassed about today), the DSP supported almost every other counterrevolutionary movement that sought to overthrow the Soviet and East European workers states. Among the movements that the DSP were most enthusiastic about were the nationalist and anti-Soviet Ukrainian Popular Front and the Lithuanian, Latvian and Estonian Popular Fronts. This was despite the fact that the DSP were simultaneously cheering for capitulatory Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev who for a time as the leader of the workers state was opposed to these “Popular Fronts.” When the Yeltsin-led open counterrevolutionaries made their bid for power in August 1991, the DSP then committed the ultimate betrayal of socialism by not only “critically” supporting the ascendancy of the Yelstin forces but actually having a leading DSPer physically join Yeltsin’s barricades during the decisive events. This DSP representative, Renfrey Clarke, actually boasted about how he tried to help deliver a letter of solidarity to Yeltsin from then British Labour Party leader Neil Kinnock (see the article, “Eye witness report; Moscow during the coup,” Green Left Weekly, 4 September 1991, https://www.greenleft.org.au/node/690). Even the Communist League (who sell the paper The Militant), who are often less inclined to capitulate to imperialism than Socialist Alternative, Solidarity or Socialist Alliance, joined the counterrevolutionary united front. Thus, their newspaper’s description of the victory of Yeltsin’s alliance of hardline anti-communist students, small-time capitalists, Orthodox priests and outright fascists was headlined: “Soviet workers defeat coup”!
ADVANCETHE STRUGGLE FOR SOCIALIST REVOLUTION IN UKRAINE & RUSSIA!
Giventhatit is so
obvious that it was the destruction of socialistic rule in the former USSRthathas led to the suffering and bloodletting in
Ukraine and other former Soviet republics it is clear that what is needed is to fight for new socialist revolutions to restore working class state power to Ukraine, Russia, Belarus, Georgia and all the former Soviet republics. Whether the resulting new workers states choose to join into a union – or several unions – and in what combination is a separate and in many ways secondary question. It will depend on the manner in which the poisonous nationalism unleashed by counterrevolution is overcome in the course of the revolutionary struggles. Some may ask: how can we guarantee that new workers states will not again degenerate and be defeated. That would be like a worker asking for an iron-clad guarantee that a strike against bosses will succeed before engaging in it. There are no guarantees in the class struggle. A strike’s outcome depends on how decisively the workers act, how far- sighted and resolute their leadership are and how much support the action wins from other workers. Similarly, the integrity and survival of a workers state depends on how secure the workers hold on power is and how much the revolutionary struggle in other countries can come to their assistance. The Soviet workers state first degenerated and many decades later collapsed because the revolutionary working class movement was not powerful enough to overcome the political, economic and military onslaught of world capitalism on the workers state. Ensuring that future workers states are protected against degeneration and collapse requires fighting to ensure that the international revolutionary workers movement is as strong as possible. For ultimately the defence of workers states and the fight to win them are achieved by one and the same method – the method of the revolutionary class struggle.
Key to the struggle for socialism in the former Soviet republics is the fight against the nationalist influence that divides workers of different ethnicities and lines them up behind their “own” exploiters. In the Ukraine, it is urgent for workers to oppose reactionary Ukrainian nationalism with its strong anti-Russian and anti-Semitic bent. However, as each of the competing nationalisms feed off each other it is not possible to defeat simply one of the opposing nationalist ideologies by themselves. Ukrainian and Russian nationalists hate each other but both rely on the existence of the other to justify their own existence. Not only has extreme Ukrainian nationalism come to the fore but Russian nationalism has also surged since the February coup in Ukraine and then further increased with Crimea’s return to Russia and the eruption of the Donbass conflict. Putin has been whipping up this nationalism, which has served to divert the Russian masses’ frustrations at their hardships caused by capitalist inequality and a stagnant economy away from the capitalist exploiters whom Putin serves. Aggressive Russian nationalism is also being promoted by more hardline forces than Putin including the fascist Vladimir Zhirinovsky’s misnamed Liberal Democratic Party of Russia. The last few months has seen mass, extreme nationalist rallies in Russia full of reactionary symbols from the Tsarist era such as the black, gold and white monarchist flag used by the Russian empire from 1858 to 1883. Such Russian nationalist mobilisations can only play into the hands of the Ukrainian extreme nationalists who raise the spectre of a return to the subjugation under Russia of the Tsarist times. On the other hand if there were mass workers mobilisations in Russia opposing this reactionary nationalism it would give a great boost to those Ukrainian leftists standing against Ukrainian nationalism and fascism just as a struggle against the anti-Russian ravings of Ukrainian nationalists and their bloody war on the Russian-speaking people of the Donbass would cut the ground from under the Russian nationalists. For the revolutionary unity of Russian and Ukrainian workers!
Key to dispersing the poisonous fumes of nationalism and to organising the working class for the struggle for power is to mobilise working class actions to defend ethnic minorities, dark-skinned immigrants, leftists and gays from the fascists. To be successful such actions must be mass mobilisations. Small scale anti-fascist actions cannot defeat the fascists because in both Ukraine and Russia the fascists are well and truly out of the egg. In Russia not only is there a terrifying level of murders by fascists but Zhirinovsky’s fascist party received nearly 12% of the vote in Russian parliamentary elections. In Ukraine, the fascists are a component of the actual government. However, they are now threatening to overthrow the government and establish a fascist dictatorship. The slogan of the fascist Ukrainian irregulars fighting in the Donbass conflict is that: once we finish with the Russians we’re coming for the government in Kiev. Although they are part of the government, the fascists think that the conservative majority in the government are not extreme enough in opposing ethnic Russians and Jews. They point to the fact that both the prime minister Yatsenyuk and one of the two vice prime ministers, Volodymyr Groysman, happen to be of Jewish origin to create a fanciful notion of Zionist domination – ironically the very same claim made by Russian fascists within the Donbass rebel forces! The recent offer of regional autonomy for Donbass made by president Poroshenko and the parliamentary majority has further incensed the fascists.
Although the Ukrainian fascist paramilitary forces are a serious threat it is important to note that they do not currently have anywhere near majority support from the Ukrainian people. In the May presidential elections, the two fascist candidates, Tyahnybok of Svoboda and Yarosh of Pravy Sektor, received just a meagre 1.2% and 0.7% of the votes respectively. In the case of Svoboda, this was a notable setback as in the last parliamentary elections in 2012, they received over 10% of the vote. To put the recent electoral showing by the fascists in perspective, in the German elections prior to Hitler taking power in November 1932, Hitler’s Nazis received over 33% of the vote. And in the subsequent elections four months later, before the Nazi forces actually established their fascist dictatorship, the Nazis secured nearly 44% of the vote.
However, the danger of fascists seizing outright power in Ukraine should not be underestimated. In the absence of a class struggle fight on the behalf of the masses’ interests and the building of unity between Ukrainian, Russian, Jewish and other workers, it is certain that fascist demagogues will be able to exploit the economic crisis in Ukraine. Furthermore, even with the limited popular support that they have, the fascist paramilitary forces in Ukraine are right now terrorising leftists, Jews, Russian speakers and dark-skinned migrants and students. What is urgently called for is working class–centred mass actions to defend groups targeted by the fascists. Such a mass working class, anti-fascist movement could first emerge in ethnically integrated, industrial cities like Kharkiv and Dnipropetrovsk and then spread on to Kiev and other cities. What would give such a movement real authority too is if workers in the Donbass simultaneously mobilised to defend Romani and Ukrainian speaking people from attacks by Russian fascist factions within the rebel forces.
Especially given the penetration of fascists into the Ukrainian state forces, it is crucial for anti-fascist actions to be independent of the state and all wings of the capitalist class. In this way, working class-centred defensive actions against the fascists can become a springboard for a working class offensive against the capitalists and their impending austerity drive. However, to realise such a perspective requires the building of an authentic communist party in Ukraine. The Communist Party of Ukraine (KPU) won much support in the past because it was identified with the former USSR. Sympathy for the KPU reflected the people’s longing for the days of the Soviet Union. However, the KPU squandered this sympathy by seeking alliances with – and thus being tarnished in the eyes of the masses – one or other wing of the capitalist class. In 2010, the KPU became one of the parties in a parliamentary coalition supporting the government led by Mykola Azarov of Yanukovych’s, capitalist Party of Regions. Following the 2012 elections, although trying to distance itself somewhat from this government, the KPU again voted in parliament for the second Azarov government. In earlier years, the KPU had not only supported other corrupt Party of Regions governments but had even once joined a bloc with the conservative, pro-Western parties. Constantly allying with one or other wing of the capitalists, many KPU leaders are careerists who seek the privileges associated with being part of the political elite. At the same time many grassroots and mid-level KPU cadre have shown considerable courage in the face of the right wing repression and fascist attacks of recent months. Yet the KPU itself bows to reactionary nationalism and some KPU cadre have publicly opposed emulating European countries on the grounds that this means accepting African migrants and permitting homosexuality! Against such vile backwardness, a truly communist, internationalist party like Lenin’s must be built. Ukraine needs a party that will train cadre to follow in the revolutionary footsteps of devoted Ukrainian communists of the past like Leon Trotsky and Christian Rakovsky: a party that can unite the toilers of all ethnicities to smash the filthy fascist forces for good by overthrowing capitalist rule.
ONLYSOCIALIST REVOLUTION CAN SAVE HUMANITYFROM THE THREAT OF WORLD WAR THREE!
SincethecollapseoftheUSSR,theU.S.-ledWesternimperialistshavegottenusedtobullyingtheworldwithlittlehindranceandlittlecompetition.Theydon’twantanemergingRussiancapitalist rival spoiling the party and, thus, want to isolate and containRussia.TheyknowfullwellthatRussia’smilitarystrengthpresentsa problem. Late lastmonth,sick of the Western powers’ aggressive posture against Russia over Ukraine,Putin boldly declared: “I want to remind you [the West] that Russia is one of the mostpowerful nuclear nations. This is a reality, not just words.” Everyone, indeed, took notebecausethatisindeedthe“reality,notjustwords”!
In the early period after the destruction of the USSR, the new Russian capitalist rulers, while trying to assert their independence – for example in respect to the conflicts in Yugoslavia – were very much junior partners to the U.S. A. It was the U.S. that had orchestrated the capitalist counterrevolution that brought the new rulers to power and they still needed Western help to consolidate their rule. For example, take the 1996 Russian presidential elections for which the Communist Party of the Russian Federation’s candidate Gennady Zyuganov was set for victory. Although the Communist Party’s program was not revolutionary and Zyuganov’s victory would not have spelled the end of the new capitalist state it, nevertheless, would certainly have impeded Russia’s free market economic reforms and would have been a stunning propaganda blow against world capitalism. To stop this, the capitalists’ chosen candidate, then president Yeltsin relied on massive cash injections from the West to fund his campaign as well as the U.S. pressuring the IMF to grant a $10.2 billion loan to Russia so that Yeltsin could pay Russia’s long overdue wages and pensions on the eve of the elections. Additionally, Yelstin had to rely on a CIA- assisted dirty tricks campaign against Zyuganov as well as Western and Russian agencies organising massive electoral fraud to “win” the election. More generally, with the destruction of socialistic rule sending the Russian economy into free fall, the new Russian capitalist rulers relied on their Western senior partners for the capital and investments needed to try and stabilise the capitalist economy.
Although at a level far below the relative position of the former USSR, eventually the capitalist Russian economy did stabilise. Putin brought more discipline to the mafia capitalists that ruled Russia – forcing them to give up some of their individual interests and bloody competition between each other for the sake of the overall interests of their class. Meanwhile, with Russia a huge oil/gas supplier, the strength of Russian capitalists grew as the price of oil and gas surged. Today, world oil prices are well over four times what they were when Putin first became president in 2000! This has been a decisive factor in shaping the Russian capitalist class’ outlook. Thus, while Putin does have a slightly different outlook to what Yeltsin did, the main difference in their governments is not due to differing personal political proclivities but due to the different positions of Russian capitalism during their rule. Putin, after all, had been Yelstin’s deputy and heir apparent.
The growing strength of Russian capitalism was highlighted when ten years after a 2003 joint venture between Russian oil tycoons and British petroleum giant BP that produced a company called TNK-BP, this same TNK-BP was taken over by a Russian firm. Today, Russian tycoons with interests in oil/gas, steel and banking are splashing their cash around in investments in the Mediterranean, Middle East, Britain and even Asia. Despite having just 2% of the world’s population, nearly 10% of the world’s richest 250 people are Russian citizens. Due to the concentrated nature of Russian industry, these oligarchs are so wealthy that they have personally ammassed capital of the size held by banks and can often acquire decisive stakes in corporations by themselves or through partnerships among themselves. Russian capitalists are known for buying up big in companies listed on the London Stock Exchange and for buying huge holdings in London property and banks. All this has been of little benefit to working class Russians. However, what its growing economic strength has meant is that Russia has been able to re-modernise its military which had been ageing and deteriorating since the collapse of the USSR.
Some people, noting how the Soviet superpower stayed the hand of the Western powers and prevented these imperialists from riding roughshod over the world to the extent that they wanted to, hope that Russia with its immense military strength and its growing economic clout and self-confidence can now do the same. Indeed, Russian military aid is today, to some extent, assisting Syria to ward off a takeover by the NATO proxy “rebel” forces. Throughout history there have been such examples of capitalist powers providing assistance to a people fighting a just anti-colonial war against one of their rivals in a situation where they were not in a position to become the new masters of those people. They did this purely to weaken their rivals. The British imperialists often did this to their rivals in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century while during the Second World War, Hitler’s Nazis offered some modest assistance to the Indian independence activist Subhas Chandra Bose in his struggle against British colonialism. However, Russia’s backing of Syria is largely an exception. Since the emergence of the Putin era, the U.S-led Western imperialists have continued to trample all over the world’s peoples. In 2001 the U.S. invaded Afghanistan and then two years later they invaded Iraq and occupied it for a decade. Russia has also not directly impeded the imperialist drive to destroy the Chinese workers state. Moscow’s position with respect to China is, to be sure, nuanced. It is the only world power that does not threaten China either militarily or politically and has built lucrative trade arrangements with China. At the same time it notably refused to stand by socialistic China in its disputes with imperialist Japan over the South China Sea, has supported Washington’s push against China’s socialistic DPRK ally and did not stand against the anti-communist campaign against China in the lead up to the 2008 Beijing Olympics (in turn it has been striking how up to now China has refused to take any stand in defence of its Russian economic partner against the Western attacks on it over the Ukraine crisis). Meanwhile, when NATO moved to bomb Libya and impose regime change on it in 2011, Russia stepped aside and allowed this to happen. And, in general, Russia has not opposed the numerous imperialist military adventures in Africa over the last few years, such as those conducted by the French imperialists in the Ivory Coast and Mali.
In part, this is because Russia’s military strength with respect to the NATO powers is slightly below what the USSR’s was and so is its relative economic position. However, this is not the only reason. The main reason that Russian power has not been able to play the same curbing role on imperialism that the former USSR did is because Russia is a capitalist power whereas the former Soviet Union was a socialistic power. And when examining this question, this difference means almost everything! This is not to say that we should not welcome Russian support for Syria. Even while maintaining their struggle to overthrow their “own” capitalist rulers, communists in Russia should make sure they do not obstruct whatever arms Russia sends to Syria (while not calling for this themselves) or for that matter the Donetsk and Luhansk separatists. However, in general, in global terms we can have no expectation of Russia being a strategic deterrent to Western imperialism. Russia being a capitalist power means that it will seek out – and has achieved – deals with the Western imperialists to allow the latter’s subjugation of “Third World” peoples in exchange for modest stakes for Russia in the resulting loot there or in other theatres of exploitation.
Most importantly, consider the difference in the domestic response when the USSR obstructed imperialism to those cases when Russia defies Western powers. When the USSR crossed imperialism, the response amongst class-conscious workers in imperialist centres like Australia was inspiration and increased sympathy for communism while amongst reactionary elements it brought increased hatred for communism. In short, when the USSR did impede imperialism the battle was reflected domestically as part of the class struggle. A struggle between the working class whose interests lie in fighting for socialism and capitalism whose interests are in crushing communist influence. However, when today Russia (or some other capitalist power) gets in the way of a rival, the effect is to encourage reactionary great power nationalism on all sides. Such reactionary nationalism is poison to class struggle – and as Marxist-Leninists we understand that ultimately only the class struggle leading to the revolutionary overthrow of imperialist states from within can decisively stop imperialism.
We, of course, do support the struggle of the masses of the neo-colonial and semi-colonial countries against imperialism. Thus, we defend the Syrian Army’s struggle against the Washington-proxy “rebels.” However, we do so largely from the point of view that the defeat of the pro-imperialist “rebels” would firstly weaken the imperialist rulers at home and thus encourage the class struggle within the imperialist centres. Secondly, because the defeat of the “rebels” would energise the anti-imperialist, liberation sentiments of the Syrian masses, this could open the door to the Syrian working class taking power from their “own” economically-tied-to-imperialism capitalist rulers.
However, there is an emerging left-liberal trend that looks instead to capitalist opponents of the West to be part of a force that can stop the tyranny of Washington-led imperialism. This trend, which is often composed of some very articulate and well-read intellectuals and academics, is not organised or even coordinated and the individuals concerned do not necessarily even consider each other as part of a common trend. However, it consists of people who are co-thinkers on several issues and share certain common features. Firstly, while they also side with socialistic states like China and the DPRK when they are in standoffs with imperialism, they make no distinction between such states and capitalist countries – like Russia and Iran – that clash with Western imperialism, ascribing to each an equal progressive status. Thus, they often have rather unrealistic hopes that the BRICS countries which group together socialistic China with capitalist power Russia, semi- colonial India and capitalist countries in between can actually become a bulwark against imperialism. Secondly, their hopes that certain capitalist countries could become serious impediments to the Western imperialist juggernaut are based on their lack of belief in the revolutionary capacity of the working class in the Western imperialist centres. This springs from the lofty middle class, academic circles that they inhabit from which (looking at the working class from the outside) it is easy to be dismissive of the possibility of revolutionary class struggle. For some within this left-liberal, anti-Western- imperialist trend, their dismissal of the class struggle in the West is all too convenient.
Their relatively privileged position makes them quietly half-satisfied with the domestic reality in the West while finding the Western rulers’ entire foreign policy – as well as certain particular excesses at home – cruel and illogical. Thus, some elements within this trend are prone to labelling far-left groups that capitulate to imperialism – like the Cliffites – as “ultra-lefts” rather than as the right-opportunists that they are. This false retort of “ultra-left” allows these middle class, anti-imperialists to, on the one hand, correctly attack left groups for lining up behind Western imperialist regime-change schemes by simply backing every anti-government movement abroad while, on the other hand, maintaining a rotten, liberal critique of these far left groups for being too irreconcilable to the capitalist rulers at home. Yet, in fact, groups like Socialist Alliance and the Cliffite groups (Socialist Alternative and Solidarity) are far from irreconcilable enough against the rulers at home – tailing after the ALP and the Greens and promoting strategies for change that rely on organs of the capitalist state. It is, in fact, these groups’ rightist adaptation to the imperial rulers at home from which their conciliation to imperialism’s agenda abroad arises.
Of course, the individuals who can be considered part of this left-liberal, anti-imperialist trend do make some very well-informed and effective critiques of Western imperialism. Thus, when necessary we should join in united front actions with them, for example against the imperialist drive for regime change in Syria. At the same time we must maintain our clear political independence from them and should criticise their political shortcomings. We need to be clear in the current conflict in Ukraine that while we defend the just struggle of the Donbass separatists and oppose the Western sanctions, bullying and propaganda against Russia, we do so not because we invest in capitalist Russia any progressive mission or because we hope that Russia can, even for its own reasons, become a bulwark against imperialism. We take our positions because this is what is necessary to weaken our “own” imperialism and the nationalism it uses to poison class struggle and because this is what is necessary to advance the struggle for socialism in Ukraine and Russia as well.
We repeat that as Marxist-Leninists we understand that only the working class united and drawing behind it all the oppressed in class struggle – alongside socialistic states where the working class masses already hold state power – can ultimately stop imperialism.
As Leninists, we also understand that capitalist powers clashing with rival powers will eventually lead to world war. Capitalist rivalries brought us two world wars last century. If the capitalist system is not overthrown it will lead to a new world war– this time one fought where all sides have nuclear weapons at the start of the war. During the Occupy protests in 2011, some liberals and conspiracy types promoted theories, still prevalent today, that capitalism is simply a system of financial schemes where people in three piece suits dream up devious monetary plots to rip off the population. However, there is much, much more to it. Capitalism is a system of exploitation of labour ultimately enforced not only by propaganda but by the use of, or threatened use of, force against those who dare to resist. It also involves the capitalists of the more powerful countries exploiting the masses of the poorer countries again through the actual, or threatened, use of military force. Furthermore, this imperialist tyranny abroad is protected from rivals and would be rivals also by the use, or threatened use, of military force. In summary, violence is at the heart of capitalism especially in its final and highest stage – the stage of imperialism.
To put things in perspective, the tensions between the U.S-led Western imperial powers and their Russian would-be capitalist rival are, currently, nothing like the level they were between the rival capitalist powers at the start of World Wars I and II. Indeed, the current tensions between the Western powers and capitalist Russia are not yet, at the time of writing, a quarter of what they were at the height of the Cold War between the imperialist powers and the socialistic USSR. It was then that huge, heavily armed, military forces faced off against each other on the borders between the U.S.-led imperialist countries and the Moscow-led, Warsaw Pact socialistic countries. However, the heightened capitalist tensions do point very much to the future slide towards world war. The expected line-up and combinations in such a possible conflict can quickly change. The capitalist powers have no real loyalty to each other. Although, currently, the NATO countries are all arrayed against Russia, we can see how France and especially Germany eye up Russia’s military strength and wonder how nice it would be to combine their economic clout with Russia’s military power to stop the Americans from dominating everything. Indeed, it was notable that Germany, which has close economic ties with Russia, was not happy with the recent NATO meeting that approved a tougher line against Russia. France, for its part, had to be pressured by the U.S. to postpone – for the time being – the delivery of two, highly advanced Mistral navy assault ships to Russia. Meanwhile, the extent of friction between the U.S. and its German “ally” is evident in the recent revelations of extensive U.S. spying on German government leaders and in the angry response it provoked from the German government. In July, the stakes were raised further when Germany expelled the CIA representative at the U.S. embassy in Berlin. As for what the U.S. really thinks of its EU “partners” this was colourfully expressed in U.S. Assistant Secretary of State, Victoria Nuland’s now famous, “F_ck the EU!” statement to the U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine that was recorded in the phone intercept, referred to earlier. There are indeed some elements within the Washington establishment that wonder why it is not Russia that the U.S. is allying with. They think having Russia aboard could put their West European potential competitors on the back foot and, what is more, secure Russia’s co-operation for the anti-communist drive against China.
It is the question of China that moderates and conditions inter- imperialist tensions. What unites the various imperialist powers is their common need to ultimately destroy the socialistic state in China. Thus, the drive against China somewhat retards the inter-capitalist rivalries. The extent to which rivalries flare up is, therefore, also conditioned by the extent to which the imperialists are confident that the current degree of capitalist economic penetration within China can open the way for capitalist counterrevolution there. The renewed pro- market reforms being flagged in China by rightist premier Li Keqiang – most significantly ones that involve sales of minority stakes in some state-owned enterprises to private investors – and the replacement of the former Hu Jintao government by a more right-leaning one headed by Xi Jinping has, no doubt, given the imperialists renewed hope. Yet they would also recall that every time in the past that they feel that they are making progress towards the goal of precipitating the collapse of socialistic rule in China, the goal posts seem to move further away as the intervention of the Chinese working class and determined leftists force a retreat in pro-capitalist measures. Xi Jinping’s recent unequivocal statements that China must stick to socialism would have again recalled these disappointments amongst the imperialists. In December last year, a U.S. warship almost rammed into a Chinese naval vessel in the South China Sea, highlighting that Washington understands that the collapse of socialistic rule in China can only be possible if the imperialists maintain military and political pressure on the PRC.
Even given the moderating of inter-capitalist tensions due to the existence of a socialistic power, the capitalist system, if not overthrown first, will ultimately, soon or latter, lead to world war. For the only way that the capitalist powers can make up for the decay of their system at home – which has seen major parts of the capitalist world lurching from one economic crisis to another over the last 6 years – is through increasing their plunder and exploitation of the peoples of the “Third World.” However, there is only a finite amount of bounty to loot and each of the capitalist powers want as great a share of it as possible. It is this intense competition for spheres of exploitation that will inevitably lead to a new world war unless the system that causes it is not first swept away through socialist revolution.
Right now, one set of tasks for Western leftists that are necessary to advance the struggle for socialist revolution is to demand the lifting of Western sanctions against their Russian rival, to oppose their military aid to their Ukrainian junior partners and to oppose the Western imperialist propaganda and diplomatic campaign against Russia. Let’s not allow Tony Abbott – and the pro-capitalist ALP – to get away with diverting working class anger at the ruling class’ vicious attacks on low rent public housing and its planned assault on medicare and unemployment payments by whipping up national-chauvinism against Russia. As communists, who passionately support what the former Soviet workers state represented, we of course have a special hatred for the Ukrainian and Russian capitalists whose rule was founded on the destruction of our USSR. But we understand that behind this counterrevolution stood the Western imperialists – who remain the most powerful, brutal and dangerous forces on the planet today. One of the partners in this Western imperialist alliance happens to be the Australian capitalist class – the main enemy of this country’s working class, Aboriginal people, non-white working class youth, the unemployed and all the poor. Let’s make sure workers are not lined up behind the predatory schemes abroad of Australian imperialism. Let’s instead do everything to weaken this main enemy at home so that the working class and the downtrodden can eventually sweep away from power this nasty, racist and ambitious exploiting class for good.