I have been challenged in my critical support of Russia for its invasion of Ukraine by Lenin who during the First World War said it was foolish to support Germany against Russia or vice versa, and that the people should seek revolution regardless.
This is written in The Defeat of One’s Own Government in the Imperialist War
The phrase-bandying Trotsky has completely lost his bearings on a simple issue. It seems to him that to desire Russia’s defeat means desiring the victory of Germany.
In all imperialist countries the proletariat must now desire the defeat of its own government. Bukvoyed and Trotsky preferred to avoid this truth
I agree with that, but then how exactly do we call ourselves Marxist-Leninists if we directy contradict Lenin on some small but important aspects.
Leninism does not mean taking his word for gospel but studying them in the context of their historical conditions and adapting them to ours.
What does revolutionary defeatism look like in practice? It does not mean for third party bystanders like me to root for their favourite country like in a football game. It is an attitude that Lenin wanted the people of Russia to adopt to create conditions that would destabilise the ruling class and allow the Bolsheviks and other worker parties to sieze power. Currently worker movements in Russia are a pale shade of what they were like in Lenin’s time. There is no vanguard party of any sort to sieze power.
Let’s say Russia fail in whatever it is they are trying to do. Undoubtedly, Ukraine would not be able to pull this off without a lot of help from NATO. They will also likely not pledge neutrality at the end, which just foments more instability. I don’t see how this helps the working class in Russia.
I think we go in circles if we try to reconcile the specific historical choice that Lenin made in WWI regarding a certain situation, with the historical choice that WWIII sets upon us at the moment. (plus we have the WWII in between to draw experience from, trotskyism eg). imo leninist theory does not contradict, since the main contradiction is here, right staring at us, and this principle is not violated, on the contrary. Each decision is judged in the historical context it appears, there is no transcended “right choice”. Lenin indeed is not a dogma, leninism, perhaps.
This isn’t a contradiction with what Lenin said. Under US hegemony, most of the world is unwillingly governed by the US. So most of the world should be rooting for the defeat of the government ruling over them, the US.
Anticommunist thought also hadn’t solidified into fascism yet, either, so Lenin couldn’t have taken Nazis into account.
Remember that Marxist Leninist thought is a framework of thought through which to analyze the world. While both Marx and Lenin would argue that they were correct in what they wrote, they’d also argue that what they wrote was correct because it was a critical analysis of the things happening around them. They wouldn’t want us to be dogmatic in our approach. They’d want us to be just as critical in our analysis as they were.