https://nitter.cz/Hbomberguy/status/1705973610320404798#m
WhO is InVaDinG wHo???
Explain how one capitalist country moving their de jure border a couple hundred miles at the cost of thousands of lives advances the cause of global communism, because I ain’t seeing it.
You aren’t seeing it because you haven’t been paying attention.
I didn’t write the following, but it is a good summary as to why it should be the position of Marxists and leftists in general to critically support Russia especially with respect to the SMO. It was a response to someone else naively saying they just didn’t like war in general and this war is just one capitalist state fighting a proxy war against another, similar to what you’re saying. While it’s understandable to feel that way, given the amount of propaganda you’re force-fed, it is not materialist and it is completely failing to see the bigger picture. The person who wrote the response is @SimulatedLiberalism@hexbear.net.
and this struggle is between two capitalist empires which both want to do more capitalism, so there’s no benefit to either side winning
I keep seeing this take cropping up in online Western leftist circle and to be very honest, I always consider this to be the laziest takes on war for people claiming to be on the left.
This is no different than saying that there is no difference for the left when it comes to whether the North or the South wins in the American Civil War because neither of them was socialist. Well, would it surprise you that Marx wrote an entire collection of essays just on analyzing the American Civil War?
To quote Lenin from his Lecture on “The Proletariat and the War”, October 1 (14), 1914:
For a Marxist clarifying the nature of the war is a necessary preliminary for deciding the question of his attitude to it. But for such a clarification it is essential, first and foremost, to establish the objective conditions and concrete circumstances of the war in question. It is necessary to consider the war in the historical environment in which it is taking place, only then can one determine one’s attitude to it. Otherwise, the resulting interpretation will be not materialist but eclectic.
Depending on the historical circumstances, the relationship of classes, etc., the attitude to war must be different at different times. It is absurd once and for all to renounce participation in war in principle. On the other hand, it is also absurd to divide wars into defensive and aggressive. In 1848, Marx hated Russia, because at that time democracy in Germany could not win out and develop, or unite the country into a single national whole, so long as the reactionary hand of backward Russia hung heavy over her.
In order to clarify one’s attitude to the present war, one must understand how it differs from previous wars, and what its peculiar features are.
We can write entire essays about the war in Ukraine, and it is anything but “a war between American and Russian capitalists”.
For one, if this is about Russia expanding its capital, why is the Russian Central Bank doing everything it can (including rate hikes and devaluing the ruble) to undermine Putin’s effort to achieve economic self-sufficiency in the face of unprecedented sanctions, and directly aiding the Western imperialist cause? If anything, it is stifling the expansion of Russian capital.
Such narrative crumbles at the slightest inspection of what is actually going on within the Russian political and economic structures, and points to a more fundamental division that Michael Hudson had pointed out regarding the conflict between finance vs industrial capitalism.
And we’re not even getting to the wider geopolitical implications of the war in Ukraine yet - what does it mean for Western imperialism? The anti-colonial struggles of the Global South? The effects on global financial institutions (IMF, World Bank, WTO) and the efforts to decouple from such oppressive structures (which is what de-dollarization is all about).
We have to ask ourselves, what would a fascist victory in Ukraine mean for left wing movements in Eastern Europe? What could the total subjugation of Russia - a country that has large scale military equipments, raw resources and minerals, and agricultural products - to Western capital mean for the anti-colonial movements in the Global South?
Leftists who refuse to apply a materialist and historical method to understand the world’s events will inevitably fail to see the underlying currents of the global state of events, and as such they cannot predict where the world is heading and will not be able to position themselves to take advantage of the impending crisis.
After all, it was WWI that resulted in an explosion of socialist movements within the imperialist European states, why? Because the socialists back then actually combined theory and practice (what Gramsci referred to as praxis) to take advantage of the predicament.
How do rate hikes signal that Putin is being undermined by the central bank? Don’t most countries attempt to raise capital in the short term during wars? “Buy War Bonds!” and all that. If anything, isn’t that a signal that capital is being consolidated in the state in order to devote to war effort?
But I want to ask you the other side of a question you raised: what happens to left wing movements in Eastern Europe if Russia completely annexes Ukraine? It creates a migration crisis and a new “threat” on the eastern border. That’s not a clear-cut W for the communists like you’re making it out to be. We already know how Europeans react to these sorts of things, and it hasn’t been good for the communists.
How do rate hikes signal that Putin is being undermined by the central bank? Don’t most countries attempt to raise capital in the short term during wars?
I’m not as versed in the economic nuances as the person I quoted above, but from what I do understand, I think your confusion comes from conflating finance capitalism with industrial capitalism. Finance capitalism in Russia has more interests tied to western interests. All the sanctions hurt them, though the sanctions did not hurt the industrial capitalists nearly as much because Russia still has great productive capacity (unlike the US whose foreign policy is almost completely ruled by finance capital now). It is the productive capacity that is being consolidated in Russia under the Russian government, which has been nationalizing a lot of industry - something we commies tend to see as a good thing. I’m sure others with a better understanding of the economics could give you a more precise/accurate answer. Reading some more Michael Hudson would do us both some good. Still, it does not undermine the fact that a victory for Russia would be beneficial for everyone who is not a NATO country, or an aspiring one, it would be beneficial to the global working class.
But I want to ask you the other side of a question you raised: what happens to left wing movements in Eastern Europe if Russia completely annexes Ukraine? It creates a migration crisis and a new “threat” on the eastern border.
It doesn’t create a new threat. The threat has been existing for a while which is why the SMO became necessary. This will be a problem going forward, but it already was, and would have been worse had Russia done nothing as NATO continued to train Nazi paramilitary groups for that express purpose, continue to spread deeply racist Russophobic propaganda among the populace, crush any whiff of dissent and/or leftist, and put military bases and Nukes within a distance that Moscow couldn’t take them down before they reached the capital city.
At least this way, the Russians living in Eastern and Southern Ukraine won’t be ethnically cleansed, but instead protected and become part of the Russian Federation, as they overwhelmingly want to do. This problem you’re describing about terrorism happening won’t only be directed towards Russia, either. When the war is inevitably lost by Ukraine, there will be a lot of Nazis who are going to justifiably blame the west and we will be looking at some hideous terror actions against western Europeans.
As for leftist movements in Eastern Europe, it can’t be much worse than it is now, where they are all completely repressed, made illegal, and in Ukraine, shot as traitors. I highly doubt Russia is going to “completely annex Ukraine” because anything they might gain from annexing it in its entirety is easily outweighed by the many difficulties of doing so. I think as far as territory under Russian control, Russia will be happy with Crimea, the current contested Oblasts and perhaps a bit more where there is actual support for Russia by the Ukrainians living there. However, that doesn’t mean Russia wouldn’t demand regime change in Ukraine, making sure that a government is installed that is not frothingly hostile to them, will not pursue NATO membership under any circumstances, and will not be pro-west in general. In such a scenario, I don’t see any reason why leftist parties that are now illegal will not be able to begin to operate again, especially seeing as leftist parties tend not to be pro-western for very obvious reasons. The government Russia is trying to (and succeeding at) taking down is extremely fascist and there is literally no hope for anything even the tiniest bit leftwing to gain any sort of foothold there. It’s impossible to predict how things like that will percolate out of this war, but to think that the status quo, or the pre-war situation in Ukraine was better for leftists is just not knowing anything about the recent history of the region.
Russia being ultimately victorious would indeed be good for leftist projects in that region. But it is nothing compared to how much better it would be for leftist projects in the rest of the world. It is in the rest of the Global South where hope can truly flourish and I’m totally fucking here for it. That’s a whole other effort post, but also hopefully it’s even more obvious why that’s the case.
Has anyone in the Kremlin actually expressed interest in annexing the entirety of Ukraine? I’ve seen this claim thrown around a lot, but I’ve never seen a source.
so they should just allow the hegemonic capitalist empire to spread nazism and install puppet governments in all the nations around them and slowly balkanize and rip their country apart for a 2nd looting?
The US has attempted to throw coups in almost every nation bordering Russia in the last decade. Russia stopped them in Syria, Kazakhstan and Belarus but failed to stop them in Ukraine. The current Ukrainian government are Maidanite fascist putschists and puppets of America. They are being used as proxies to destroy russia, doing ethnic cleansing on the borders to provoke russia. Their state is illegitimate. Their borders don’t matter and aren’t sacred. Those regions want to leave after being oppressed by the Galician fash for 8 years while the western world looked on and did nothing except perfidiously buy time to give more tanks to nazis
I don’t exactly want Russia’s current particular brand of ideology to be spread either. I just don’t see how you can look at this conflict and think either side are the “good” guys. Or how either result will be better than the other.
Out of curiosity, do you think it was acceptable for leftists to give critical verbal support to Britain and France in 1939 in their fight against Nazi Germany?
I don’t exactly want Russia’s current particular brand of ideology to be spread either.
This is America’s brand of ideology injected into them by force after the collapse of the USSR. The USA is the #1 source of reaction on Earth, spreading it far and wide with their coups and actions. They are the blackest reaction, the source of all fucking evil and the hegemonic empire. They turned Ukraine into a Nazi cesspit. I don’t want America’s current particular brand of fascism to KEEP SPREADING LIKE IT HAS FOR 80 YEARS
They’re killing Nazis and Americans. That makes them the good guys by definition. DPRK and China support them. How do you look at the situation and see it as “both sides are the same” when all AES are on one side in opposition to all western imperialists on the other?
