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
The main source of surplus value in the 21st century, is global south workers creating consumer products for imperial-core countries, being paid wages from the 18th century, while working with tools and factories from the 21st century. These superprofits feed not only the capitalists of the imperial-core countries, but their welfare states, and general populations too (possible because there are many more global south workers for every imperial-core citizen).
Russia is not an imperial core nation: it is not in the OECD, it is not involved in wealth extraction based on monopsonist buying power, its not protected by the US military and its dollar hegemony, and its wages are nowwhere even close to imperial-core ones. The question should be asked: who is Russia imperializing / stealing from?
Many here are committing the childish error of equating all capitalist nations as being equal. No: there are a small number of imperial-core capitalist nations, looting and stealing from a much larger number of poorer nations.
The “defeat of one’s own government” applies to the imperial core, not to nations struggling to survive against neoliberal globalization.
Ppl here need to read John Smith - Imperialism in the 21st century, which is essentially the update to Lenin’s Imperialism.
Thanks for suggesting the reading.
Here’s a free copy of the book for you comrades! Keep informed.
Yeah comrade, the stuff they don’t tell you about JS Mill in uni. Give me that pure, uncut shit!
russia would be exploiting its own people obviously, especially the ethnic minority areas that vote heavily communist to this day because of that exploitation
obviously a country that exploits its own people and not other countries is still better™️ but there are better things to aspire to
of its own government
I think this is crucial, because Lenin writes as Russian on the position of Russians in a conflict between Russia and another country. Most of us clearly aren’t Russian, so our desire doesn’t have to be Russias defeat. That’s something the Russian comrades have to wrestle with and for them it might very well lead to a deviation from Lenin. If so, that doesn’t have to be bad. We shouldn’t be dogmatic about these things and as ksynwa pointed out the material reality in this conflict is significantly different to that of WW1 - mainly the global hegemony of the US and the fact Russia today probably can’t be called imperialist in the Leninist sense.
Still, for us Non-Russians and Non-Ukrainians we should desire the defeat of our own governments as he laid out. Beyond that our main enemy is US hegemony and Western imperialism, our main ally the international proletariat. A Russian defeat here would be a gigantic loss for the latter and a win for the former, so I don’t see how this is a position we could take, especially in a social and political climate as one-sidedly hostile to Russia as we’re in today.
One could argue that besides Russia defending its sovereignty, they are also defending the interests of Russian energy companies in this war. Mainly, because if Russia is cut off from Germany by anti-Russian states, it won’t profit as much or at all from the sale of Russian gas and oil to Europe. I don’t think that’s the case personally, but I can see it being part of the reason this war is happening.
Back then a single country was not the sole hegemon. Currently apart from being the wealthiest country, USA has a tight grip over global finance and fuel supply, alongside having the most largest and the most expensive military by many miles and the ability to influence and sometimes control the economy and politics of countries on all seven continents which is also regularly exercised maybe except in Antarctica.
This conflict is qualitatively different from those that were contemporary to Lenin’s time.
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.
You don’t need to give Russia critical support. Much less the US. It is enough to recognize that Putin’s reaction is what one should expect from a traditional power to the West’s attempt to tighten the siege, as much as the Tsar’s reaction to Austria-Hungary’s attempt to annex Serbia was to be expected.
The most positive thing about Russia is that it represents yet another breach in US global hegemony (although the main one, of course, is China). To maintain the defiance, the Kremlin occasionally supports progressive anti-US regimes in the global South such as Cuba and Venezuela, but Putin and his favorite allies in Europe and North America are downright reactionary. That there is such a division between capitalist forces is something that Marxists can eventually take advantage of, but that in no way means that what today’s Kremlin deserves any support, critical or otherwise.
The PSL’s statement on Russia’s intervention is a good read to view the line we should take on this conflict.
The conflict currently exploding in Ukraine and rippling throughout the region and the entire world is hugely dangerous. The reckless and provocative actions of the U.S. government and its allies must cease immediately. The economic warfare being unleashed against Russia — which will first and foremost affect the country’s working class — will only deepen the crisis, as would troop deployments anywhere in Europe.
Recognizing that Russia has legitimate security concerns does not require an endorsement of all its military actions, nor Putin’s suggestion that Ukraine has no basis to exist as an independent county, nor his larger geopolitical strategies. The role of the U.S. antiwar movement is not to follow the line of countries in conflict with U.S. imperialism, but to present an independent program of peace and solidarity and anti-imperialism.
The menace of war can only be defeated by international solidarity among the peoples of the world and a resolute struggle against U.S. imperialism, which must demand the abolition of NATO. No war on Russia!
The article is a month old now but there are other updates regarding more current events.
I posted this elsewhere as a good summary of my positions and it just got called tankie propaganda. I wish I knew other MLs in my field, but it’s all a bunch of libs.
Yeah posting in liberal online spaces is always going to be hit or miss, there’s no motivation from the other party to enter into good-faith discussions. As this event is currently ongoing, it’s probably best to ease in very gently and try to get a feel if discussing is going to be a waste of time or not, then try to focus on NATO instead of letting the other party dictate the flow towards condeming Russia.
It’s especially difficult after 4 years of Russiagate. These “tuned in” libs consent has been so manufactured and US intel being right about Russia invading sealed the deal for most of them. Biden just recently said that Putin can’t stay in power and they all cheered in every comment section everywhere lol.
It’s honestly ending up this way with everything. I honestly just need to wait for this to blow over. I tried and get people more invested in some of the elections and actions of the global south which aren’t fully in support of the US, and it just gets ignored.
In all imperialist countries the proletariat must now desire the defeat of its own government
So in the imperialist west, we desire the defeat of the imperialist west.
I think the conclusion here hinges entirely on the question, “Is Russia imperialist?” The answer itself, in my opinion, is not so obvious. I see a lot more people drawing a conclusion one way or the other than I do analyzing the economic and material circumstances which form the basis of their conclusion. This is forgivable. The economic situation is complex to begin with, many of the primary sources are gated behind a language barrier. To give the situation a proper analytical treatment, we need various specialists to converge and sort through the details (which is not the most reassuring thing to tell people at the peak of a crisis).
When Russia is held up against the United States, the conclusion that “these are the same thing” is laughable. If we want to determine whether or not Russia is imperialist strictly based on capital exports or the extraction of super-profits, I don’t think it is quite there yet. On the other hand, we can see the manifestation of several prerequisite trends, including the development of industrial monopolies and the concentration and increasing dominance of finance capital.
I find the question hard to answer because contemporary Russia truly finds itself in this sort of “in-between” phase in the development of imperialism, and this conflict has highlighted a few of the traps which can result from treating imperialism as a binary “yes or no” condition and basing all further analysis on that conclusion.
“No war but class war” and working towards the defeat of our local bourgeoisie is solid ground to begin from, but to understand this crisis better and anticipate where it is heading, we need a much deeper analysis than “Russia isn’t imperialist” vs. “but they’re acting imperialistly.”
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I wish there would be less, but its to be expected, we are all learning together
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i agree full heart. far beyond theories and ideologies, the class instinct is more important. Russia’s operation in Ukraine caused an avallanche of events in the world. The teaming up back to back with China and the helping hand they both offered to their neighbouring countries and other, set a tone in world’s geopolitics talk that has never been heard before. First time in history NATO’s crimes against humanity were talked out loudly, not by the communists, but by whole nations. Truth about NATO’s nature - as an imperialist organization! - but imperialism is communist talking - was exposed in public, almost with communistic terminology, which crept up and ruled the public dialogue on the matter. And it was about time, since all the countries that stood up for Russia have actually felt what imperialism is. Exposing NATO’s criminal nature was a first step to get the modern world’s history streight. And all that wasnt through a hate speech of division, we and the others, which is so closely tied to emprires, but through a public dialogue claiming that with cooperation all countries can manage. People from Africa stood up en masse, winning the social media warfare on our behalf, Jamaica just ousted the royals, and even the ultra right regimes of UAE and Saudi Arabia sat on the same table with Assad. It is like they set a different tone, a different paradigm, even in the context of capitalism. If Russia had been equally imperialist as the US, i dont believe that people would stand up for it. Even the way Russia executes the warfare is so much diffrent than the world has seen from NATO. People of Middle East and Africa know it for years now, we only have fallen for the western russo-sino phobia propaganda which has been going on non stop, at leat since both countries turned to peoples’ republics. The world’s working class’s heart at this moment beats up for Russia, and this is where a communist should find himself. At least for now.
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indeed. we have very little to almost inexistent information about what is going on around the world, all these years. And that information is still filtered through the western media. i will not be surprised if ALL upheaval has been NATO’s making…
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: )) thanks for the link! hehe, now its explained why CIA and other secret services didnt see that coming… aparently they have been extremely busy messing the world.
See, the thing is, I can certainly turn the tables on this and ask you if your post is in good faith. Because let’s face the facts, this is a textbook imperialist conflict. It doesn’t matter one bit if Russia’s doesn’t meet every criterion for being an imperialist hegemon right now. Imperialism is capitalism in decay and every sufficiently developed capitalist state will turn outwards to become imperialist eventually. What’s actually important is the class character of the states or blocs involved and Russia is a bourgeois state that exploits and represses its working class. This conflict has done nothing so far to strengthen the positions of either the Ukrainian or Russian working class in their class struggle and neither side represents actual liberation from the capitalist hegemony.
I agree that this situation has been a blow to the US-led western hegemony and that these are certainly interesting times with a new multi-polar world order appearing… But I fear this is just the prelude to a bigger conflict on the horizon where the actual consequences for the international class struggle are not foreseeable.
But do you need to be at the imperialist stage of capitalism to do imperialism as foreign policy? E.g. Russian Federation wasn’t at the imperialist stage during its participation in WW1 with imperialist goals.
Is it really that important to know whether or not Russia is imperialist right now to analyze the nature of this conflict? Russia is a capitalist bourgeois state and given the right conditions and opportunity it will become imperialist since imperialism is just the eventual higher form of capitalism. Additionally I do think that this current conflict is very much imperialist in nature. The very reason for this war is to secure the Russian territory from encroachment of western influence and militarization, i.e. the territorial division and redistribution of the world among the big capitalist powers. In the case of Ukraine this redistribution has been going on since 1991 and it’s only now escalating because Russia has become increasingly powerful and is in a position to fight back.
These are some great points. I suppose “hinges entirely on the question,” was an overstatement on my part. This is only true if you are trying to shoehorn this conflict into an inter-imperialist framework while other explanations exist. One particular question of interest is, what happens if revolutionary defeatists in Russia get their wish, the Russian bourgeois state is toppled, and there is no sufficient workers movement to seize state power? We could very well see the means of production being seized by western finance capital, rather than the proletariat. This is purely hypothetical and rather unlikely IMO, but it is the future the Atlantic Council gremlins are dreaming about.
I don’t think that this is a realistic scenario right now. What is even the probability of a real “toppling” of the Russian state in the current situation? That would pretty much need a full invasion and occupation by western forces or a true proletarian revolution.
I think it would be more likely for some sort of western-led color revolution to occur and in the light of a color revolution it’s just not sensible to talk about revolutionary defeatism, since all the systems of a bourgeois state would already be in place. The means of production are either part of state-owned firms or firmly in the hands of the Russian bourgeoisie. It certainly wouldn’t be anything like the “shock therapy” after the fall of the USSR. The state would stay the same, its class character unchanged, just with different capitalist factions with different interests in power. It would lead to more capital movement from the west into Russia, state firms would get privatized, profits moved out of the country. For the Russian working class it would worsen all the effects of capitalism. Funnily enough it would probably be a lot like what has happened to the Ukraine. It would be the regular mundane evil of the current imperialist world system.
All in all I don’t think that the current situation actually strengthens the position of the Russian working class in their class struggle. The Russian state has only become more repressive during this war. Additionally, a strong, independent Russian economy with a big public sector will potentially ease the contradictions of capitalism and thus placate and capture the working class (cf the history of western European social democracies).
Critical support is dialectical: contemporary capitalist Russia is cringe, but killing neo-Nazis on NATO’s payroll is based.
Okay, here’s my serious take:
If you want to go by Lenin’s words, you only need to look a little bit further:
Anyone who would in all earnest refute the “slogan” of defeat for one’s own government in the imperialist war should prove one of three things: (1) that the war of 1914-15 is not reactionary, or (2) that a revolution stemming from that war is impossible, or (3) that co-ordination and mutual aid are possible between revolutionary movements in all the belligerent countries
The war is *currently *liberating for people of DPR/LPR and deals a huge blow to the absolute most reactionary form of capitalism, and the economic front of it is loosening the grip United States have on the world. It’s also currently very unlikely that a proletariat revolution would stem from it, given that the RF units are formed from conscripts from DPR/LPR and contract military, and with them yet seeing the nazi atrocities firsthand the material reality itself would deter them from turning against their generals.
Then again, this is only the early act of the next World War we’re seeing unfold. We won’t be able to determine the character or sides of the WW3 at this point of time, as even some of the EU countries are not all that contempt due to sanctions against Russia.
That doesn’t mean you should forget all the Russian collaborators whitewashing, or support for scum like Ilyin, Solzhenitsyn and Yeltsin, or anti-worker laws that have come under Putin. It’s not a socialist state. It’s not even a pro-worker state. It’s merely temporarily aligned with the interests of working class in crushing the US-centered unipolar order, and that alignment may change any time.
This is not an interimperialist war no matter how much we wanna believe Russia is no different from the US.
Lenin knows his shit. But Lenin was up against imperialist countries where it was a fight between every european country which were all doing an imperialism.
But Lenin wasnt up against an ultra state such as NATO.
Stalin had a good view of the positions of imperialist and antiimperialist positions that advances Lenin’s thoughts where the class character of a country was secondary to their position in imperialism.
Let’s try to avoid making out own version of “both sides bad” just because Lenin was right to call all divided european states fighting each other an interimperialist war.
China, an AES state, supports Russia in this.
So there you go.
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Fair enough.
Actually, you’re right, and most of the SolidNet parties, including my own, take a neutral tone on the matter (although they still sort-of lean toward Russia’s side of things, including my own).
So yeah, you’re right. My apologies.
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Thanks, comrade!
