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 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.”
Great write up. If I am being honest I am beginning to wonder if these sorts of posts are in good faith. I am not trying to be overly critical of people questioning the bias on leftist forums, but I have a lot of experience recognizing posts which try to sabotage productive discussions from my days on investing forums before I saw the light of Marx.
This whole “both sides are imperialist capitalist systems” is straight out of the Western propaganda playbook. This is what they said about the Soviet Union as well, anyone who can’t understand that needs to put on their thinking cap. There are nuances at play which as leftists, we must learn to untangle.
These posts represent a massive lack of understanding of the existing russian economy, the internal political struggle which has been ongoing since 1991, and the devious cultural warfare used by the west as a prybar to divide the rural and urban populations (as they have throughout the west). Western Propaganda has been acknowledged as unreliable with regards to China. It is high time for people to understand that this applies to russia as well. Obviously they are not exactly the same, but welcome to the real world of nuance.
Edit: just want to add that I am not accusing anyone of anything, but these sorts of questions need to be thought of in the context of the material reality not just the ideologies. Being confused that your understanding of the situation in Russia - which you received from the propaganda in the west - is not lining up with the theory you read is totally unsurprising. Go to the hard data, like Purchase power parity in russia.
I wish there would be less, but its to be expected, we are all learning together
Yeah that’s why I added my edit - I may have been too harsh by coming out saying they were engaged in bad faith argument. But we must remember to operate within the real world.
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.
Exactly, although I hope the rhetorical standing up turns into a material reality. Overall though “It doesn’t matter if a cat is black or white, so long as it catches mice.”
I wonder how many people know that the Russians just recently sent their military into Kazakhstan to prevent a color revolution and then withdrew their troops immediately afterward? Very imperialist. People rely on western propaganda to shape their understanding of Russia and are surprised when it doesn’t quite quite make sense…
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…
It has been almost 100% https://youtu.be/NK1tfkESPVY this guy went public in the 80s and has a bunch of great interviews.
: )) 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).