Not sure what you’re talking about because the Duma consists of United Russia, the communists, and a few other parties that are tiny and irrelevant.
Can you explain how it will benefit the world’s workers if NATO wins this war? Because I can easily explain how the world’s workers will benefit from a NATO defeat.
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.
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.
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
If the Russian ideology and the American ideology are the same, and Ukraine’s getting one of them either way, how can you feel like there’s a side that’s worthy of support?
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?
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 think that was absolutely correct, but other people here are telling me Lenin says the correct position is to always root for your imperial nation to lose no matter what because it will bring about communism.
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?
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.
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.
Certainly not that I know of, and as I mentioned in my other comment, it seems so obviously counterproductive, I would look at it with an extremely skeptical eye if someone from the Kremlin did say something weird as hell like that.
No, as usual, it’s just western projection and lies. Because Russia did attack places in western Ukraine early on, NAFO types take that as undeniable proof that Russia wanted to take all of Ukraine and thought it could do so in a week but failed (like that weeks Saturday morning cartoon villain, Putin shaking his fist but promising he’ll be back next week). So it becomes part of the canonical text of The Narrative. It also allows NATO/the west/US to claim they didn’t actually lose the war because “Look! See, Russia didn’t take over all of Ukraine like we know they wanted to! We won afterall!” When Ukraine’s military finally collapses, and Russia’s terms don’t include making the entirety Ukraine part of Russia proper, that’s what everyone in the west will be using as their strongest copium.
No, they have not. It is pure Western projection. Even maximalist predictions only assume Russia would annex everything east of the Dnieper plus Odessa.
Well the other users here tell me that Ukraine is a “Nazi junta” and Putin has said his goal is to de-nazify Ukraine, so how else could he accomplish that goal? Even if it’s just some temporary regime, all the Nazis (which again, I’ve been assured Ukraine is like 90% Nazis) would flee west, leading to the same problematic outcomes.
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.
I’m incredibly unconvinced. In Ukraine in particular all the communist parties had their bases in Luhansk and Donetsk before they were banned. There won’t be any leftism left in a partitioned Ukraine. And as you said, none of this goes well for the rest of Europe either.
As for the global south, what’s the outcome? De-dollarization? Already happening. American hegemony viewed as less of a threat due to losing a proxy war? As I said in another comment, America has been losing wars, proxy and otherwise, for over half a century. And this war in particular has been a very weak commitment by historical precedent.
I just don’t see how Russia (or Ukraine) gaining any territory or concessions from this war helps anybody beyond what’s already happened. It’s a waste of lives and money that could be more directly helping people. I’m not cheering for anybody here.
sO yOu’D sAy tHAt yOu uNcRitIcAlY sUPPOrt a cApITaLIst sTaTe
Seriously? That’s the best you got dipshit, you can only speak in accusations and thought-terminating cliches? Get a grip motherfucker, liberals like you are reason neo-nazism has been so normalized
Is that supposed to be a own? Yes I prefer Russian capitalists defeating Ukrainian nazis, so Russian communists don’t have to face both western backed Russian and Ukrainian nazis
I don’t understand your position. So, in the event of an imminent second Russian revolution, your supposition is that Ukrainians would be a significant counterrevolutionary force and that the US wouldn’t intervene militarily, and so if there are fewer Ukrainians, there’s more likely to be a successful second communist revolution in Russia in the near future?
And you think this is a reasonable take to have. And that it’s the land border with NATO that would be the big issue in a military conflict with the US?
This is such a bonkers take to have in light of the absurd probabilities involved. You’re like a chud who buys a gun because you think you’re going to take on the Marines.
I don’t understand your position. So, in the event of an imminent second Russian revolution, your supposition is that Ukrainians would be a significant counterrevolutionary force and that the US wouldn’t intervene militarily, and so if there are fewer Ukrainians, there’s more likely to be a successful second communist revolution in Russia in the near future?
What? They said that the Ukrainians need to be dead so that the next revolution would succeed in Russia. At least that’s how I read it. How did you interpret it?
Even if you assume this is just an interimperialist war, its basic Leninism for western communists to support and propagandize for the defeat of your own imperialist bloc in that war.
Vietnam turned a majority of Americans against the military for a number of years and gave black radicals enough room to create the Black Panther Party and end legally sanctioned segregation.
Was that worth the lives of all the Vietnamese, Laotians, and Cambodians who were killed, or the generations afterwards who died from unexploded ordinance or birth defects? I don’t think that’s such a clear cut “yes”.
Point being that non-interventionism would have been preferable, which is the position I’ve been taking all along.
Revolutionary defeatism includes undermining your own nation’s war effort, I don’t understand the difference in your position. If you can’t prevent the war, you undermine the capacity to continue it.
Since the left isn’t in any position to stop the war the better outcome would still be that the smaller bloc of capital survives as a counterweight to hegemonic capital. Better if the Russian federation remains friendly to China, and remains available to anti-colonial movements as a counterbalance to colonial forces in Africa and the Middle East (regardless of how effective they are, it seems these anti-colonial governments still want them). It’s better when capital is divided and limited than unified and able to exercise unlimited exploitation.
It seems like the Ukrainians wanted a peace deal almost immediately after the threat to Kiev, it wasn’t Russia or the Ukrainian government that blew up those peace talks.
Realistically, there’s no way this war doesn’t end with Russia gaining Donetsk and Luhansk and not much else (because they don’t really want anything beyond that, short of regime change in Kiev, which is definitely not happening). Both Russia and the US seemingly have the resources to indefinitely drag out this war just sitting on the same battle lines. Continuing the stalemate only results in more needless death.
Also realistically, my capacity to “undermine” anything is 0, so let’s have this conversation with that in mind. Continuing: as already established, I don’t support the US’s efforts to continue this war. Similarly, I don’t support Russia’s efforts to do the same. I don’t think they realistically have the ethnic Russian support base to hold western Ukraine without serious loss of life for everyone involved. Because I feel the evolving multipolarity would have been occurring anyway, I don’t think the geopolitical implications of a western “defeat” here are worth the continuing loss of life.
And how will this war be any different in that respect? Russia’s not aiming to annex all of Ukraine. The remaining rump state will be even more vassalized than before, win or lose.
Vassalized yet the billions of investments poured in left in smoke, and hopefully a landlocked rump state with half the territory will forever be unable to create a large economic powerhouse for NATO
The fact that you’re the only person who brought the term “uncritically” into it goes to show how much work you have to do to make up a position to be smug towards.
Aren’t Russia attempting to dissolve Wagner and killed all the main leaders (including neo Nazi Dimitry Utkin) in the Wagner plane crash on August 23rd this year, after the attempted Wagner coup? Tell me when Ukraine will do anything similar to Azov. And no, their half arsed integration of them into the Ukrainian armed forces does not count. Last time Zelenskyy tried to get the fash to stand down, before the war started in earnest, he got embarrassed on camera. Russia has a problem with Nazis and fascists, but it’s not nearly as big as Ukraine’s Nazi problem. There is no way someone like Bandera would be viewed as a national hero in Russia.
Richard Wagner died before the Nazi party existed, he wasn’t a nazi. I have no idea why Wagner group was named that - tbh a ton about Wagner is very mysterious. But no, I’ve never seen any evidence that Wagner group were Nazis.
I despise a whole lot about the post-Soviet government of Russia. But yeah, I completely support Russia in their noble war of self-defense against the fascist “west.” And that’s is, afaik, basically the majority opinion on this website. What the fuck are you doing here lib?
I haven’t looked up Wagner in a while. I don’t think I ever ran in to why it’s called that.
afaik, basically the majority opinion on this website.
Afaik most people treat this as an “Enemy of my Enemy” thing. NATO is much, much worse than Russia. This war can weaken NATO. NATO winning is very, very bad because it reinforces NATO/US hegemony and would give NATO access to vast new natural resources as they carve up Russia, to say nothing of the massively increased risk of nuclear war as Russia disintegrates. A victory for Russia, especially a decisive victory, could greatly weaken NATOs position in the world. That would open up the possibility of multipolarity, which could create space for left movements to grow without being hunted down and destroyed by the US/NATO. It would give China more room to maneuver, as well as less powerful communist states. It might increase the chance of the US balkanizing, which would be horrific for those of us who live here but has a chance of benefiting the world.
Afaik very few people support Russia, but we recognize that a Russian victory is the most desirable outcome of this farce. Preferably sooner than later given the horrific amount of death and destruction.
Things are already badly fucked - Ukraine is firmly in the grip of fascism and the war has greatly advanced the cause of international fascism. It’s strengthened the fascist position across Eastern Europe. The EU and US are both supporting the Double Holocaust narrative openly now. It is likely that weapons from Ukraine will flood Europe over the coming years facilitating terror and violence.
In terms of geopolitics, Russia is the least-bad guys. Nothing more, nothing less.
Things are already badly fucked - Ukraine is firmly in the grip of fascism and the war has greatly advanced the cause of international fascism. It’s strengthened the fascist position across Eastern Europe. The EU and US are both supporting the Double Holocaust narrative openly now. It is likely that weapons from Ukraine will flood Europe over the coming years facilitating terror and violence.
I don’t think you can blame this on the war. This is just something becoming more of itself under pressure/heat. If you put sea water on boil it’s going to become saltier. You can’t blame Russia for the already existing contradictions and fascism of the west coming to a head
I don’t blame Russia. NATO has been working towards this war since it was founded. The war was used to purge dissident elements in Ukraine and has been used as a cause celebre for fascism. That’s all to the advantage of NATO, and NATO instigated the war by constantly pushing strategic encirclement of Russia.
I’m pretty sure the dominant position is critical support. It’s just that criticism of Russia is not that frequent because discussion of the war with libs is almost always in a context that assumes NATO framing. At least in the news mega people are dunking on the Russians regularly.
This. Libs don’t care that the Communist Party of Russia is a nationalist joke, or that smaller communist groups are largely suppressed, or that the left in Ukraine has been suppressed if not actually liquidated, or that Leftists across eastern Europe are being suppressed by new laws and increasingly brazen fascist regimes. All they care about is the bogus good guys bad guys narratives. They’re openly hostile to the concept of geopolitics or really any complexity at all.
I completely support Russia in their noble war of self-defense against the fascist “west.”
What is it about Russian capitalism that you like so much? Which of their anti-LGBTQ laws do you find more appealing than the west’s?
Not supporting Ukraine is one thing (which I think is the actual majority opinion on this website), but rooting for Russia is an entirely different thing.
My position is that I do not give a shit who wins because they’re both fascist.
What is it about Russian capitalism that you like so much? Which of their anti-LGBTQ laws do you find more appealing than the west’s?
Nothing, I already established that.
My position is that I do not give a shit who wins because they’re both fascist.
Liberal nonsense. They aren’t. Further, Russia isn’t the global hegemon, they aren’t the power holding up the capitalist-imperialist world system. The US is. In this war, the Ukrainians are US proxies. The victory of Russia over NATO is a good thing for all the oppressed and marginalized people of the Earth. NATO victory would be catastrophic. Honestly, I despise liberals like you so fucking much. Normally I expect shit takes like this from federated shitheads. What are you doing here?
How many laws criminalizing the self-expression of LGBT individuals does it take before a country becomes fascist? What about industrial capitalist collusion with the government? How much of that before you’re fascist?
In my eyes, the instant Yeltsin divvied up the state industries and created the oligarchs, he created an inextricable bond between private capital and the state.
Every state use violence to sustain itself, not sure why you think this is a particularly interesting own. Russia is a Liberal capitalist state under attack from the global hegemonic empire and its proxies. Just like Gadaffi’s Libya was, or Syria’s Assad, or Sadam’s Iraq. In all these cases, we oppose the American empire in it’s imperialism. You cannot extend the same courtesy to Russia because your brain has been poisoned by 7 years of russiagate hysteria from liberals and 100 years of anti-communist red scare propaganda in your culture
Russia should achieve victory in this war against imperialists. We can criticize Russia’s domestic and internal policies, but geopolitically they are in the right. Seems you have a hard time getting onboard with even critical support against your empire
There’s literally Nazis on both sides.
And honestly who even cares? Russia has Nazis? Great, shoot them, too.
Russia does have Nazis, but they’re all fighting for Ukraine.
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Not sure what you’re talking about because the Duma consists of United Russia, the communists, and a few other parties that are tiny and irrelevant.
Can you explain how it will benefit the world’s workers if NATO wins this war? Because I can easily explain how the world’s workers will benefit from a NATO defeat.
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That’s why it’s called critical support 😉
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Tfw even the Zionist Entity is on the good side but the
still votes for evil.
One side has criminalized nazis within their military ranks and the other side hasn’t
Or did you miss all those Russian interrogation videos that shows russian troops strip searching POWs for sign of nazi tattoos
What am I saying of course you missed it, cause actaully engaging with reality or the evidence is toxic to liberals these days
Russia has a underground nazi problem, Ukraine is a nazi state, get the fuckin difference
So you’d say that you uncritically support a capitalist state?
No one here unironically supports capitalist Russia uncritically
We’re reading different comments my friend.
Nope, everyones reading the same comments, you’re just being an obtuse little troll and intentionally misconstruing what everyone is telling you
That’s totally on you
Recognizing that one side winning the war will benefit the cause of communism and the other won’t is not the same as uncritical support.
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.
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.
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
If the Russian ideology and the American ideology are the same, and Ukraine’s getting one of them either way, how can you feel like there’s a side that’s worthy of support?
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?
Isn’t there somebody you forgot to ask?
https://chiapas-support.org/2022/03/06/there-will-be-no-scenery-after-the-battle/
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 think that was absolutely correct, but other people here are telling me Lenin says the correct position is to always root for your imperial nation to lose no matter what because it will bring about communism.
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.
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:
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.
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.
Certainly not that I know of, and as I mentioned in my other comment, it seems so obviously counterproductive, I would look at it with an extremely skeptical eye if someone from the Kremlin did say something weird as hell like that.
No, as usual, it’s just western projection and lies. Because Russia did attack places in western Ukraine early on, NAFO types take that as undeniable proof that Russia wanted to take all of Ukraine and thought it could do so in a week but failed (like that weeks Saturday morning cartoon villain, Putin shaking his fist but promising he’ll be back next week). So it becomes part of the canonical text of The Narrative. It also allows NATO/the west/US to claim they didn’t actually lose the war because “Look! See, Russia didn’t take over all of Ukraine like we know they wanted to! We won afterall!” When Ukraine’s military finally collapses, and Russia’s terms don’t include making the entirety Ukraine part of Russia proper, that’s what everyone in the west will be using as their strongest copium.
No, they have not. It is pure Western projection. Even maximalist predictions only assume Russia would annex everything east of the Dnieper plus Odessa.
Well the other users here tell me that Ukraine is a “Nazi junta” and Putin has said his goal is to de-nazify Ukraine, so how else could he accomplish that goal? Even if it’s just some temporary regime, all the Nazis (which again, I’ve been assured Ukraine is like 90% Nazis) would flee west, leading to the same problematic outcomes.
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.
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.
I’m incredibly unconvinced. In Ukraine in particular all the communist parties had their bases in Luhansk and Donetsk before they were banned. There won’t be any leftism left in a partitioned Ukraine. And as you said, none of this goes well for the rest of Europe either.
As for the global south, what’s the outcome? De-dollarization? Already happening. American hegemony viewed as less of a threat due to losing a proxy war? As I said in another comment, America has been losing wars, proxy and otherwise, for over half a century. And this war in particular has been a very weak commitment by historical precedent.
I just don’t see how Russia (or Ukraine) gaining any territory or concessions from this war helps anybody beyond what’s already happened. It’s a waste of lives and money that could be more directly helping people. I’m not cheering for anybody here.
https://mronline.org/2022/05/07/russia-and-the-ukraine-crisis-the-eurasian-project-in-conflict-with-the-triad-imperialist-policies/
ProxyTheAwesome and Frank already covered all the points I have and I can’t think of anything to add.
Multipolarity
sO yOu’D sAy tHAt yOu uNcRitIcAlY sUPPOrt a cApITaLIst sTaTe
Seriously? That’s the best you got dipshit, you can only speak in accusations and thought-terminating cliches? Get a grip motherfucker, liberals like you are reason neo-nazism has been so normalized
I’m not the one rooting for the capitalists to beat the other capitalists.
Is that supposed to be a own? Yes I prefer Russian capitalists defeating Ukrainian nazis, so Russian communists don’t have to face both western backed Russian and Ukrainian nazis
Again get a grip you nazi supporting motherfucker
I don’t understand your position. So, in the event of an imminent second Russian revolution, your supposition is that Ukrainians would be a significant counterrevolutionary force and that the US wouldn’t intervene militarily, and so if there are fewer Ukrainians, there’s more likely to be a successful second communist revolution in Russia in the near future?
And you think this is a reasonable take to have. And that it’s the land border with NATO that would be the big issue in a military conflict with the US?
This is such a bonkers take to have in light of the absurd probabilities involved. You’re like a chud who buys a gun because you think you’re going to take on the Marines.
I don’t even know how to parse this.
What? They said that the Ukrainians need to be dead so that the next revolution would succeed in Russia. At least that’s how I read it. How did you interpret it?
palestine (capitalist) and iran (capitalist) should destroy israel (fascist)
Even if you assume this is just an interimperialist war, its basic Leninism for western communists to support and propagandize for the defeat of your own imperialist bloc in that war.
America’s been losing wars for a long time and no socialist project has ever erupted from it.
Revolutionary defeatism doesn’t seem to work very well.
Vietnam turned a majority of Americans against the military for a number of years and gave black radicals enough room to create the Black Panther Party and end legally sanctioned segregation.
Was that worth the lives of all the Vietnamese, Laotians, and Cambodians who were killed, or the generations afterwards who died from unexploded ordinance or birth defects? I don’t think that’s such a clear cut “yes”.
Point being that non-interventionism would have been preferable, which is the position I’ve been taking all along.
Revolutionary defeatism includes undermining your own nation’s war effort, I don’t understand the difference in your position. If you can’t prevent the war, you undermine the capacity to continue it.
Since the left isn’t in any position to stop the war the better outcome would still be that the smaller bloc of capital survives as a counterweight to hegemonic capital. Better if the Russian federation remains friendly to China, and remains available to anti-colonial movements as a counterbalance to colonial forces in Africa and the Middle East (regardless of how effective they are, it seems these anti-colonial governments still want them). It’s better when capital is divided and limited than unified and able to exercise unlimited exploitation.
It seems like the Ukrainians wanted a peace deal almost immediately after the threat to Kiev, it wasn’t Russia or the Ukrainian government that blew up those peace talks.
Realistically, there’s no way this war doesn’t end with Russia gaining Donetsk and Luhansk and not much else (because they don’t really want anything beyond that, short of regime change in Kiev, which is definitely not happening). Both Russia and the US seemingly have the resources to indefinitely drag out this war just sitting on the same battle lines. Continuing the stalemate only results in more needless death.
Also realistically, my capacity to “undermine” anything is 0, so let’s have this conversation with that in mind. Continuing: as already established, I don’t support the US’s efforts to continue this war. Similarly, I don’t support Russia’s efforts to do the same. I don’t think they realistically have the ethnic Russian support base to hold western Ukraine without serious loss of life for everyone involved. Because I feel the evolving multipolarity would have been occurring anyway, I don’t think the geopolitical implications of a western “defeat” here are worth the continuing loss of life.
Losing wars how? Sure they’re technical defeats but they get the job done and create regions ripe for hyper exploitation.
And how will this war be any different in that respect? Russia’s not aiming to annex all of Ukraine. The remaining rump state will be even more vassalized than before, win or lose.
Vassalized yet the billions of investments poured in left in smoke, and hopefully a landlocked rump state with half the territory will forever be unable to create a large economic powerhouse for NATO
Here it is, the chauvinism I knew you had exposed by your own hand
The fact that you’re the only person who brought the term “uncritically” into it goes to show how much work you have to do to make up a position to be smug towards.
i critically support them destroying NATO Nazi militaries on their border
Capitalism is a spectrum
Lemm.ee ass comment
Aren’t Russia attempting to dissolve Wagner and killed all the main leaders (including neo Nazi Dimitry Utkin) in the Wagner plane crash on August 23rd this year, after the attempted Wagner coup? Tell me when Ukraine will do anything similar to Azov. And no, their half arsed integration of them into the Ukrainian armed forces does not count. Last time Zelenskyy tried to get the fash to stand down, before the war started in earnest, he got embarrassed on camera. Russia has a problem with Nazis and fascists, but it’s not nearly as big as Ukraine’s Nazi problem. There is no way someone like Bandera would be viewed as a national hero in Russia.
Still waiting for a source on their being nazis on the Russian side. People keep alleging this, but never provide any evidence.
In b4 Dmitry Utkin
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who got purged and killed by putin lmao
Rusich Group
The mercenary group named after Hitler’s favorite composer aren’t Nazis?
Some of y’all actually uncritically support Russia, huh?
Wild.
Richard Wagner died before the Nazi party existed, he wasn’t a nazi. I have no idea why Wagner group was named that - tbh a ton about Wagner is very mysterious. But no, I’ve never seen any evidence that Wagner group were Nazis.
I despise a whole lot about the post-Soviet government of Russia. But yeah, I completely support Russia in their noble war of self-defense against the fascist “west.” And that’s is, afaik, basically the majority opinion on this website. What the fuck are you doing here lib?
I haven’t looked up Wagner in a while. I don’t think I ever ran in to why it’s called that.
Afaik most people treat this as an “Enemy of my Enemy” thing. NATO is much, much worse than Russia. This war can weaken NATO. NATO winning is very, very bad because it reinforces NATO/US hegemony and would give NATO access to vast new natural resources as they carve up Russia, to say nothing of the massively increased risk of nuclear war as Russia disintegrates. A victory for Russia, especially a decisive victory, could greatly weaken NATOs position in the world. That would open up the possibility of multipolarity, which could create space for left movements to grow without being hunted down and destroyed by the US/NATO. It would give China more room to maneuver, as well as less powerful communist states. It might increase the chance of the US balkanizing, which would be horrific for those of us who live here but has a chance of benefiting the world.
Afaik very few people support Russia, but we recognize that a Russian victory is the most desirable outcome of this farce. Preferably sooner than later given the horrific amount of death and destruction.
Things are already badly fucked - Ukraine is firmly in the grip of fascism and the war has greatly advanced the cause of international fascism. It’s strengthened the fascist position across Eastern Europe. The EU and US are both supporting the Double Holocaust narrative openly now. It is likely that weapons from Ukraine will flood Europe over the coming years facilitating terror and violence.
In terms of geopolitics, Russia is the least-bad guys. Nothing more, nothing less.
I don’t think you can blame this on the war. This is just something becoming more of itself under pressure/heat. If you put sea water on boil it’s going to become saltier. You can’t blame Russia for the already existing contradictions and fascism of the west coming to a head
I don’t blame Russia. NATO has been working towards this war since it was founded. The war was used to purge dissident elements in Ukraine and has been used as a cause celebre for fascism. That’s all to the advantage of NATO, and NATO instigated the war by constantly pushing strategic encirclement of Russia.
Yeah, basically 100% agree with this.
I’m pretty sure the dominant position is critical support. It’s just that criticism of Russia is not that frequent because discussion of the war with libs is almost always in a context that assumes NATO framing. At least in the news mega people are dunking on the Russians regularly.
This. Libs don’t care that the Communist Party of Russia is a nationalist joke, or that smaller communist groups are largely suppressed, or that the left in Ukraine has been suppressed if not actually liquidated, or that Leftists across eastern Europe are being suppressed by new laws and increasingly brazen fascist regimes. All they care about is the bogus good guys bad guys narratives. They’re openly hostile to the concept of geopolitics or really any complexity at all.
The Wagner Group itself is just a PMC with all that implies, but its subgroup DShRG Rusich are quite openly neo-Nazis.
Wikipedia (edited by NATO friendly nerds) says this group contains “several dozen people”
What is it about Russian capitalism that you like so much? Which of their anti-LGBTQ laws do you find more appealing than the west’s?
Not supporting Ukraine is one thing (which I think is the actual majority opinion on this website), but rooting for Russia is an entirely different thing.
My position is that I do not give a shit who wins because they’re both fascist.
Nothing, I already established that.
Liberal nonsense. They aren’t. Further, Russia isn’t the global hegemon, they aren’t the power holding up the capitalist-imperialist world system. The US is. In this war, the Ukrainians are US proxies. The victory of Russia over NATO is a good thing for all the oppressed and marginalized people of the Earth. NATO victory would be catastrophic. Honestly, I despise liberals like you so fucking much. Normally I expect shit takes like this from federated shitheads. What are you doing here?
Your position is that Russia is not fascist, is that right?
Correct. They are not.
How many laws criminalizing the self-expression of LGBT individuals does it take before a country becomes fascist? What about industrial capitalist collusion with the government? How much of that before you’re fascist?
In my eyes, the instant Yeltsin divvied up the state industries and created the oligarchs, he created an inextricable bond between private capital and the state.
Hitler hated tobacco
We should
Sir we all know this word is not actually part of your lexicon
I spent the first 18 years of my life in South Louisiana but go off.
GJ, I could feel the restraint it took to end that sentence at ‘off’
what?
Oh I think you’re implying that it took effort for me not to misgender you, maybe? Weird thing to say.
Phenomenal
Edit: So I took the bait. I got beat up. Phenomenal bait.
This ain’t bait. Ukraine is a nazi state backed up by the 4th Reich (NATO). Russia isn’t.
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Every state use violence to sustain itself, not sure why you think this is a particularly interesting own. Russia is a Liberal capitalist state under attack from the global hegemonic empire and its proxies. Just like Gadaffi’s Libya was, or Syria’s Assad, or Sadam’s Iraq. In all these cases, we oppose the American empire in it’s imperialism. You cannot extend the same courtesy to Russia because your brain has been poisoned by 7 years of russiagate hysteria from liberals and 100 years of anti-communist red scare propaganda in your culture
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Russia should achieve victory in this war against imperialists. We can criticize Russia’s domestic and internal policies, but geopolitically they are in the right. Seems you have a hard time getting onboard with even critical support against your empire
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Only one side has nazis integrated into the military and armed with western weapons
Jerusalem Post included Prigo on its list of 50 influential Jewish people, so I guess Wagner can’t be Nazi
Source?