How Lenin viewed oppressed nations

Lenin's Fight For Self-Determination Of Oppressed Nations  
BY V.I. LENIN

Reprinted below are several excerpts from Lenin's Final Fight: Speeches and Writings, 1922-23, a new title published by Pathfinder Press.

In the final months of his life, Russian revolutionary leader V.I. Lenin waged a political fight to maintain the communist course that had led the workers and peasants to power over the landlords and capitalists. A central part of that course was defending the rights of the historically oppressed nationalities in the old tsarist "prisonhouse of nations."

The right to self-determination was asserted by one of the first decrees of the newly established Soviet government in November 1917 and codified by the third Soviet congress in January of the following year. That congress passed a resolution "leaving it to the workers and peasants of each nation to decide independently at their own authoritative congress of soviets whether they wish to participate in the federal government and in the other federal Soviet institutions, and on what terms."

In September 1922, Joseph Stalin drafted a resolution on relations between the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic (RSFSR) and the various independent republics. Lenin sharply criticized the draft document, which called for the "formal entry" of the Ukraine, Belorussia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Armenia, into the Russian Soviet Federation.

"We consider ourselves, the Ukrainian SSR, and others equal and enter with them on an equal basis into a new union, a new federation, the Union of Soviet Republics of Europe and Asia," Lenin explained.

The final resolution, also drafted by Stalin and approved by the Communist party's Central Committee, incorporated many of Lenin's proposals. It also called for three of the republics-Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan-to be admitted to the new union not as full members, but as components of the Transcaucasian Federation.

When Georgian Communist leaders argued that the republic should be admitted as an independent entity, Grigory Ordzhonikidze, the Central Committee's representative in Georgia reacted by disciplining the Georgian leaders, ordering a number of them to leave Georgia and place themselves at the disposal of the Central Committee of the party in Russia.

At the end of October, nine of the 11 members of the Georgian Central Committee resigned in protest. Ordzhonikidze quickly replaced them with his supporters, who agreed to the proposed terms for the new federation. The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was formed on Dec. 30, 1922.

The following month, at a private party in his apartment in Tiflis, Georgia, Ordzhonikidze flew into a rage and struck one of the dissenting Georgian Communists. This fact came to light during the investigation by a Political Bureau- appointed commission of inquiry proposed by Stalin and headed by Feliks Dzerzhinsky. The commission's report, which Dzerzhinsky summarized to Lenin on December 12, sustained Ordzhonikidze.

Lenin, however, was not satisfied with the commission report and charged his secretaries with thoroughly reviewing it. Their report, which challenged many of the conclusions of the Dzerzhinsky commission, was suppressed by the bureaucratic regime in the Soviet Union headed by Joseph Stalin and his political heirs. It is printed for the first time in Lenin's Final Fight.

The excerpts reprinted below were dictated by Lenin to his secretaries in December 1922 as part of his "Letter to the Party Congress," directed to the 12th congress of the Russian Communist Party, which was scheduled for March 1923.

Lenin's Final Fight is ©1995 by Pathfinder. Reprinted by permission.
 
*****

BY V.I. LENIN 

In my writings on the national question I have already said that an abstract presentation of the question of nationalism in general is of no use at all. A distinction must necessarily be made between the nationalism of an oppressor nation and that of an oppressed nation, the nationalism of a big nation and that of a small nation.

In respect of the second kind of nationalism we, nationals of a big nation, have nearly always been guilty, in historic practice, of an infinite number of cases of violence; furthermore, we commit violence and insult an infinite number of times without noticing it. It is sufficient to recall my Volga reminiscences of how non-Russians are treated; how the Poles are not called by any other name than Polyachishka, how the Tatar is nicknamed Prince, how the Ukrainians are always Khokhols and the Georgians and other Caucasian nationals always Kapkasians.

That is why internationalism on the part of oppressors or "great" nations, as they are called (though they are great only in their violence, only great as bullies), must consist not only in the observance of the formal equality of nations but even in an inequality, through which the oppressor nation, the great nation, would compensate for the inequality which obtains in real life. Anybody who does not understand this has not grasped the real proletarian attitude to the national question; he is still essentially petty bourgeois in his point of view and is, therefore, sure to descend to the bourgeois point of view.

What is important for the proletarian? For the proletarian it is not only important, it is absolutely essential that he should be assured that the non-Russians place the greatest possible trust in the proletarian class struggle. What is needed to ensure this? Not merely formal equality. In one way or another, by one's attitude or by concessions, it is necessary to compensate the non-Russians for the lack of trust, for the suspicion and the insults to which the government of the "dominant" nation subjected them in the past.

I think it is unnecessary to explain this to Bolsheviks, to Communists, in greater detail. And I think that in the present instance, as far as the Georgian nation is concerned, we have a typical case in which a genuinely proletarian attitude makes profound caution, thoughtfulness, and a readiness to compromise a matter of necessity for us. The Georgian who is disdainful of this aspect of the question, or who carelessly flings about accusations of "nationalist socialism" (whereas he himself is a real and true "nationalist socialist" and even a vulgar Great Russian bully), violates, in substance, the interests of proletarian class solidarity, for nothing holds up the development and strengthening of proletarian class solidarity so much as national injustice.

"Offended" nationals are not sensitive to anything so much as to the feeling of equality and the violation of this equality, if only through negligence or jest to the violation of that equality by their proletarian comrades. That is why in this case it is better to overdo rather than underdo the concessions and leniency towards the national minorities. That is why, in this case, the fundamental interest of proletarian solidarity and consequently of the proletarian class struggle requires that we never adopt a formal attitude to the national question, but always take into account the specific attitude of the proletarian of the oppressed (or small) nation towards the oppressor (or great) nation.

December 31, 1922

What practical measures must be taken in the present situation?

First, we must maintain and strengthen the union of socialist republics. Of this there can be no doubt. This measure is necessary for us and it is necessary for the world communist proletariat in its struggle against the world bourgeoisie and its defense against bourgeois intrigues.

Second, the union of socialist republics must be retained for its diplomatic apparatus. By the way, this apparatus is an exceptional component of our state apparatus. We have not allowed a single influential person from the old tsarist apparatus into it. All sections with any authority are composed of Communists. That is why it has already won for itself (this may be said boldly) the name of a reliable communist apparatus purged to an incomparably greater extent of the old tsarist, bourgeois, and petty-bourgeois elements than that which we have had to make do with in other people's commissariats.

Third, exemplary punishment must be inflicted on Comrade Ordzhonikidze (I say this all the more regretfully as I am one of his personal friends and have worked with him abroad), and the investigation of all the material which Dzerzhinsky's commission has collected must be supplemented or started over again to correct the enormous mass of wrongs and biased judgments which it doubtlessly contains. The political responsibility for all this truly Great Russian nationalist campaign must, of course, be laid on Stalin and Dzerzhinsky.

Fourth, the strictest rules must be introduced on the use of the national language in the non-Russian republics of our union, and these rules must be checked with special care. There is no doubt that our apparatus being what it is, there is bound to be, on the pretext of unity in the railway service, unity in the fiscal service and so on, a mass of truly Russian abuses. Special ingenuity is necessary for the struggle against these abuses, not to mention special sincerity on the part of those who undertake this struggle. A detailed code will be required and only the nationals living in the republic in question can draw it up at all successfully.

Moreover we must not in any way reject in advance that as a result of all this work we may well take a step backward at our next Congress of Soviets, namely, retaining the union of Soviet socialist republics only for military and diplomatic affairs and in all other respects restoring full independence to the individual people's commissariats.

It must be borne in mind that the decentralization of the people's commissariats and the lack of coordination in their work as far as Moscow and other centers are concerned can be compensated sufficiently by party authority if it is exercised with sufficient prudence and impartiality. The harm that can result to our state from a lack of unification between the national apparatuses and the Russian apparatus is infinitely less than that which will be done not only to us but to the whole International and to the hundreds of millions of the peoples of Asia, which are destined to follow us onto the stage of history in the near future.

It would be unpardonable opportunism if, on the eve of the debut of the East, just as it is awakening, we undermined our prestige with its peoples, even if only by the slightest crudity or injustice towards our own non-Russian nationalities. The need to rally against the imperialists of the West, who are defending the capitalist world, is one thing. There can be no doubt about that and it would be superfluous for me to speak about my unconditional approval of it.

It is another thing when we ourselves lapse, even if only in trifles, into imperialist attitudes towards oppressed nationalities, thus undermining all our principled sincerity, all our principled defense of the struggle against imperialism. But the morrow of world history will be a day when the awakening peoples oppressed by imperialism are finally aroused and the decisive long and hard struggle for their liberation begins.

December 31, 1922  
 
 

 

http://www.themilitant.com/1995/5918/5918_17.html

25 years since Eastern Airline Strike began

I joined the Socialist Workers Party 4 months aftern the Eastern strike started.  It was and is a real confirmation of the party's perspectives.

An outline for an article I really wish I had time to write:

25 years since the start of the Eastern Airlines  Strike

1.  Lorenzo and "Lorenzoism"

2.  The 1989 political context

                Rout of organized labor

                                PATCO

                                P9

                                Continental

                                UK Miners' Strike

                1987 Stock Market Crash

               

3.  Machinists, pilots, flight attendants

                Labor solidarity

                Rank and file leadership

4.  Pittston Coal Strike

                Convergence with Eastern strike

                Interpenetration and reinforcement

5.  SWP Working class campaign

                JB [plenum]: "This train has left the station         

                and we are in one of the rear cars. We have to 

                fight our way to the front"

                                               

                IAM fraction members

                Building solidarity through the fractions

                Propaganda and recruitment

                A striking confirmation of the

                                "changing face of US politics."

7. "These are great and glorious times we are living        

in." [JB, Thanksgiving 1989 St Louis, MO                 Active

Workers Conference.]

                Cuba's rectification campaign

                Eastern/Pittston: a break in the rout?

                ANC

                FSLN

                Abortion rights/clinic defense

                Eastern Europe/USSR

               

8. Eastern went out of business as Gulf War began

                Union tops maneuvers fruitless

                "Better to die on your feet than live on

                                your knees."

                Rank and file lasted "one day longer"

                                than Frank Lorenzo.

9. On going to work wearing a "No Lorenzo" button:

                Some personal notes

__________________________

Words from one of the strikers:

The Eastern Strike Was A Victory For Workers 

BY ERNIE MAILHOT

Reporting on the Northwest Airlines pilots strike, the big- business press often refers to the 1989-91 strike at Eastern Airlines as a "defeat for both the company and union." The following excerpt, from The Eastern Airlines Strike: Accomplishments of the rank-and-file Machinists and gains for the labor movement, tells a different story. Ernie Mailhot, a ramp worker and cleaner at Eastern Airlines, was a rank-and- file striker. He was strike staff coordinator for International Association of Machinists Local Lodge 1018 from December 1989 to December 1990. The Eastern Airlines Strike is copyright (c) 1991 by Pathfinder Press, and reprinted with permission. Subheadings are by the Militant.

After 686 days on strike against Eastern Airlines, rank- and-file members of the International Association of Machinists (IAM) and our supporters registered the final piece of our victory against the union-busting drive of the employers when the carrier folded at midnight on January 18, 1991....

Eastern strikers from coast to coast, from Puerto Rico to Canada, reacted by calling to congratulate each other and going out to airports to celebrate.

Mark McCormick was one of the Eastern strikers who made his way to New York's La Guardia Airport the night of January 18. "I wouldn't have missed this for the world," he said, as he stood watching management personnel walk out. With a big smile on his face, he suggested to the managers that they "take tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow off."

Over the next few hours, strikers and our supporters showed up - many with handmade signs - at rowdy picket lines. The sign I think expressed our feelings the best was the one at the Miami airport that read, "We said we'd last `One day longer.' "...

The twenty-two-month strike of the IAM had defeated Eastern's attempt to create a profitable nonunion airline and set an example for all bosses who want a "union-free environment" if they can get away with it.

What the strikers were up against

To strikers and other working people, the scope of the accomplishments and victories scored in the Eastern strike are measured by what we were up against.

In 1981 U.S. president Ronald Reagan tried to set in motion union busting on a national scale when he broke the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO). A pattern soon developed of union-busting drives by the employers in major industries, with Frank Lorenzo's destruction of the striking unions at Continental Airlines in 1983 spearheading the assault.

Takeback contracts, permanent replacement workers, and union busting itself became the order of the day. In the airline industry, nonunion airlines were established and strikes, such as that of the Independent Federation of Flight Attendants at TWA in 1986, were crushed.

On March 4, 1989, when we went on strike at Eastern Airlines, we looked back on almost a decade of many more defeats than victories for labor - defeats that more often than not came without a real fight by union members.

We faced Frank Lorenzo, the number one union buster in the United States. We faced government agencies, such as the Federal Aviation Administration, that continually backed Eastern management in the face of massive union documentation of safety violations at the airline....

Despite this, we decided it was time to fight, rather than accept our only other choice: letting Lorenzo destroy our union and set an example for every other boss like him.

When we walked out on March 4, 1989, most of the rank and file of the IAM sensed our strength for the first time. The Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA) and Local 553 of the Transport Workers Union (TWU), which organized the flight attendants, also recognized our strength and our fighting determination. They joined our picket lines. The unity we had achieved between the unions and the pilots' association greatly increased our initial strength, and, in turn, our confidence.

The huge rallies at airports across the United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico -many held in cities with only a few strikers - showed us the broad support and identification our fight had evoked among working people. Many, having gone through years of concession contracts and union busting, saw the fight as their own....

The unity of the Machinists, flight attendants, and pilots in a major national strike, over a period of eight and a half months, is something that had not been seen in the airline industry before.

Winning the support of the pilots for that period of time allowed us to begin to put our stamp on the battle and step forward as a rank-and-file leadership. In addition, we became seasoned enough to understand and weather the later treachery of the pilots' officialdom....

The joint work we were able to do with the United Mine Workers, backing its strike against the Pittston coal company through the spring, summer, and fall of 1989, also played a big role in our gaining experience and confidence. From Los Angeles, to Buffalo, to Pittsburgh, to Miami, the striking Machinists and miners learned from each other. Sometimes this took the form of joint tours; other times it meant collaborating to figure out how best to rally support for both our strikes within the unions.

These organizing experiences helped show us that we could affect the battle. The dealings in the courtroom, conflicts among competing investor schemes, and debates in Congress - all these reflected the pressure brought to bear when we exercised union power and reached out to the broader ranks of labor.

Our slogan became that we would last "one day longer" than Frank Lorenzo. This meant that we would never let Eastern run a profitable airline as long as it operated with scab labor. We knew that by achieving that goal, we would help set an example for every other working person in the United States and internationally - our real family, not the "Eastern family." On April 18, 1990, in a victory for all labor, our slogan became a reality. On that day the federal government, through its bankruptcy court, removed Lorenzo from control of Eastern....

After Lorenzo was removed, our slogan remained "One day longer," but it became "One day longer" than Eastern....

Fight went far beyond fight for jobs

The fighting Machinists and our supporters accomplished huge things that go far beyond the struggle for the jobs that we had at Eastern. We showed that unlike the Lorenzos and the rest of the boss class in this country, who are motivated by greed for profits, workers will step forward and put themselves on the line in the interests of working people everywhere. This also came through in thousands of examples of other unionists pitching in to support our strike - not only here, but in New Zealand, Britain, Bermuda, and other countries....

Thousands of us are now working in other IAM-organized jobs, as packinghouse workers, as aerospace workers, or in other industries. We take the lessons of the strike with us, and one lesson we will never forget is "An injury to one is an injury to all."

It is important to remember that our fight against Eastern and other companies like it not only improves the relationship of forces for other unionists. It also creates a more encouraging environment for all those who fight against social injustices - from racist attacks to Washington's criminal wars, such as the slaughter recently unleashed against the people of Iraq.

Because of our fight at Eastern, a boss who is considering forcing his workers out on strike so he can break their union and lower their wages and benefits will think a little longer before making such a move.

As important as that is, even more important is the impact we have had on the thinking of working people who are inspired by our fight and will come to follow our example.

http://www.themilitant.com/1998/6233/6233_26.html

US left group embraces "neocon conspracy" to explain Ukraine events

Last night I wrote about UK anti war group Stop the War's promotion of a "neocon conspiracy" to explain recent events in Ukraine.

Today a US organization called PSL has used the same "ideas" to explain what they call a Washington-engineered coup by Neo-Nazis in Kiev.

(Quote):

The people of the United States are being deliberately misled and misinformed about the leading role played by the U.S. State Department, intelligence agencies and neoconservative leaders in bringing neo-Nazis to power in Ukraine.

The same neoconservative politicians and strategists that drove the country to war against Iraq in 2003, against Libya in 2011 and nearly against Syria in 2013 have been neck-deep in a protracted regime change effort in Ukraine as part of a larger geo-strategic struggle against Russia. The fact that they have worked hand in glove with armed neo-Nazis in Ukraine—with Sen. John McCain and Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland literally joining the protests—speaks volumes about the political nature of the events....

http://www.pslweb.org/liberationnews/news/why-us-aided-ukraine-coup-russia.html

___________

Rather than requote what I wrote last night, I would refer readers here:

http://marxistupdate.blogspot.com/2014/03/uk-stop-war-coalition-promotes-neocon.html?m=1

Jay
4 March.

Minneapolis Teamster rebellion began 80 years ago

The 1930s Minneapolis Teamsters rebellion
Revolutionary class-conscious leadership and the lessons for today’s militants

BY BEN JOYCE 

In the 1930s a sweeping transformation of the U.S. labor movement took place. The unions, which had been on the decline for much of the 1920s and early ’30s, began to swell in size and combativity.

In Minneapolis, only a few small shops were organized at the opening of the ’30s. The officialdom that dominated these unions had a narrow craft outlook and sought to collaborate with the bosses in hopes of securing a few jobs for a handful of privileged skilled and semiskilled laborers.

In the face of the Great Depression---era crisis, these unions increasingly came under attack by the most powerful local capitalists in Minneapolis. The main employers’ organization, the Citizens Alliance, rigorously pursued antiunion policies. 

Revolutionary leadership central
In this context, members of the Communist League of America in Minneapolis took on the challenge of transforming the local union movement. The Communist League leadership carefully drew up a battle plan and decided to set their sights on the coal yards. Given Minnesota’s harsh winters and the severe economic depression, the city depended on small, frequent deliveries of coal for heat, making the coal industry a strategic target to begin the fight. Hundreds of workers in the coal yards were unorganized.

Going up against both the bosses and the conservative local officialdom in Teamsters Local 574, the communists along with other fight-minded unionists formed a voluntary organizing committee in the open-shop coal yards and began to mobilize support for an industry-wide organizing drive. Demands for union recognition were refused by the coal bosses and the workers struck in February 1934.

The leaders of the strike realized that the first task was to win union recognition, which would get the workers’ foot in the door for the next stage. After the moving of coal was shut down for three days, the bosses gave in and recognized the union. Registering the first union victory in Minneapolis in several years, the union had set the stage for a wider and deeper struggle.

After the first victory the organizing committee won official union status and began to open up a broader struggle to strengthen the union along the lines of deepening the class-consciousness of the ranks and strengthening their control over the union. Further organizing efforts continued and culminated in a mid-April mass rally where the membership declared its demands on the general trucking employers and voted to strike if they were not met. A large strike committee was elected to prepare for this next stage of the battle.

As a strike became more imminent, both sides geared up. The Citizens Alliance helped reinforce the cops with private goon squads and special deputies.

Meanwhile, Local 574 was also making necessary preparations. A strike headquarters was set up, fashioned with a commissary to feed the strikers, a hospital to treat unionists wounded in battle, and a repair shop for the vehicles used by cruising picket squads.

On May 16, 1934, the second strike began. After several days in which the union successfully fended off scab operations, the employers stepped up their offensive. Police and hired thugs launched brutal attacks on the pickets, as the bosses attempted to get their trucks going again. Confronted with these violent assaults the workers maintained the pickets, defending themselves with clubs. After two days of fighting, not one truck moved. A truce was called.

Negotiations resulted in a settlement in which the trucking bosses were forced to recognize the union and meet initial demands on wage raises. The settlement terms were accepted by the union membership, ending the 10-day walkout.

However, shortly after the settlement, the employers said they would deal with the union only for drivers, helpers, and platform workers, and not inside workers. Meanwhile, the bosses began to cut wages and fire a number of unionists. Given the new attacks, a July 16 membership meeting decided by unanimous vote to resume the strike against the trucking companies. 

Ruling class lashes out
Taking to the streets with the same militancy as before, the union shut down the trucking industry the day after the vote. Then, after trucks had been halted for four days, police opened fire on a picket line, wounding 65 and killing two. Mass indignation spread throughout the working class in Minneapolis. The strikers continued their struggle with stronger determination to beat the bosses.

A settlement proposal was soon drafted by federal mediators and endorsed by Minnesota governor Floyd Olson. It called for a pay raise just short of union demands and threatened to impose martial law if the settlement was not accepted. The union decided to accept the terms, but the employers rejected it. Martial law was imposed on the city on July 26 and in the following days troops were ordered to seize the strike headquarters and arrest union leaders, including Communist League leaders Vincent Dunne and Miles Dunne.

Despite the presence of troops however, mass support for the union came to the fore and militant picketing exploded upon the city. Other local unions and supporters of labor condemned the move by Olson and mass pressure forced him to release the union leaders and return the headquarters to the union. 

Local 574 wins
A few weeks went by without advance by either side. Soon a new federal mediator issued a settlement proposal, which included representation for inside workers and a decision on wages to be made through arbitration. The proposal was accepted on August 21, ending the strike and opening up the possibility of union representation to the majority of workers in the general trucking industry. Immediate wage raises were agreed upon with automatic increases every year.

The victory of Local 574 opened the door to a broader campaign to organize the Midwest general trucking industry. Over the next few years, the leadership of Local 544 (the new designation for Local 574 in Minneapolis) and other locals in the region spearheaded an effort to carry the successful organizing drive across several states. In March 1938, an 11-state campaign to organize over-the-road truckers was launched and drew tens of thousands into the union.

Over the course of the transformation of the Teamsters union in the Upper Midwest, revolutionary leadership was decisive in helping make the union an instrument that could defend workers’ interests in the political field as well. Local 544 mobilized union defense against fascist attacks, combated FBI frame-ups, and mobilized labor opposition to U.S. imperialism’s entry into World War II.

The steadfast determination and discipline of the ranks was guided by the highest caliber of proletarian leadership. Carl Skoglund and Vincent Dunne were among the veteran members of the Communist League to work in the Minneapolis coal yards and open up the historic struggle. Many of the best militants were recruited to the communist movement. Farrell Dobbs, a central organizer of the over-the-road campaign later on, emerged from the ranks in the 1934 Minneapolis strikes as a union leader. He later became national secretary of the Socialist Workers Party from 1953 to 1972. He authored a four-volume series on the Teamster battles.

The course of conduct followed by communist unionists served as an example for trade union militants throughout the country. The lessons learned from this historic fight, which are documented in Dobbs’s four-volume series, continues to offer guidance to working-class fighters in the class battles unfolding today.

http://www.themilitant.com/2008/7241/724158.html

Further reading: http://www.pathfinderpress.com/The-Teamster-Series 

The 1934 truck drivers strikes that built the industrial union movement in Minneapolis and helped pave the way for the CIO, recounted in four volumes by a central leader of that battle.

Teamster Rebellion
First in the 4-volume set. Traces the development of the class-struggle leadership of the strikes and organizing drives that transformed the Teamsters union in much of the Midwest into a fighting social movement and pointed the road toward independent labor political action. Also available in Spanish and French.

Teamster Power
Second in the 4-volume set. Describes the growth and consolidation of the Teamsters union in Minneapolis and its class-struggle leadership, and the 11-state over-the-road organizing campaign that brought union power for the first time to much of the Midwest. Also available in Spanish.

Teamster Politics
Third in the 4-volume set. Tells how rank-and-file Teamsters led the fight against antiunion frame-ups and assaults by fascist goons; the battle for jobs for all; and efforts to advance independent labor political action.

Teamster Bureaucracy
Last volume in the 4-volume set. Explains how the rank-and-file Teamsters leadership organized to oppose World War II, racism, and government efforts—backed by the international officialdom of the AFL, the CIO, and the Teamsters—to gag class-struggle-minded workers.

UK Stop the War Coalition promotes "neocon conspiracy" to explain Ukraine events

In the U.S. the "neocon conspiracy" dropped off the political radar after Obama's 2009 inauguration.  But it is now recalled to life as the middle class left twists and contorts itself over the profound historical and social contradictions bound-up with the Ukraine events.

--

Readers of this blog will notice an uptick in the number of posts in the last few weeks.  Events in Ukraine, and misleading and obfuscatory spins on them promoted by various middle class left groups and parties, deserve the credit - or blame.

Events in Ukraine have offered the middle class left ample opportunity to get a variety of questions wrong, and these forces have taken advantage of the opportunity with a vengeance. 

Most, from CPUSA to Workers World Party to Party for Socialism and Liberation, immediately proclaimed the triumph of fascism in Kiev. Their definitions of fascism boil down to "anything that offends my sensibility," and consciously reject revolutionary socialist continuity on the subject, especially knowledge summed-up from actual struggles in the 1920s and 1930s contained in the works by Leon Trotsky and Daniel Guerin.

Middle class left groups and individuals also immediately liquidated any solidarity to the nationally oppressed Ukrainian and Tartar peoples of Ukraine.  Three hundred years of Great Russian chauvinism [broken only in the years 1917-1924] was rationalized out of existence in the blink of an eye.  Apparently a nation can cease being oppressed when its oppressor finds itself crosswise to a satanic "US/EU" cabal.  Uncritical support for Putin is on the order of the day.

Those who raised the national question were slapped-down as confusionists [at best] of fascists themselves.

Last night I got a Feedly link to Stop the War's statement on Ukraine, "10 things to remember about the crisis in Ukraine and Crimea,"  which can be found here.  It is written by StW leader Lindsey German.

Stop the War is a UK anti-war outfit run by members of various left wing groups.  It fielded large numbers in the streets back in 2003, before the US-organized invasion of Iraq. But its political clarity never rose higher than Bush-hating opportunist grandstanding.

The success of the U.S. president’s [2003]  trip [to London] was only reinforced by the anti-American, pro-British tone of the demonstrations in the United Kingdom, organized by the Stop the War Coalition and other forces around the theme “Stop Bush.” Focusing their fire on the U.S. government and portraying Blair as a mere “puppet” of Washington, they buttressed the nationalist framework of the British rulers’ efforts to assert their own imperialist interests in the world.

....The British nationalist, anti-American theme of these protests was underlined at the November 20 demonstration of more than 100,000 people that rallied in Trafalgar Square. A 20-foot effigy of Bush was toppled to the ground in imitation of the bringing down of a large statue of Saddam Hussein when invading U.S.-British forces took over Baghdad in April. TV coverage of the rally also showed demonstrators burning a U.S. flag. 

    Demonstrators carried signs referring to Blair as Bush’s “poodle” and reading, “Troops out now—Stop the organ grinder and his monkey,” with the prime minister of the British imperialist state portrayed as Bush’s monkey.
   

   Referring to the Istanbul bombings, Lindsay German, convener of the Stop The War Coalition, said, “I don’t think it can be any coincidence that these attacks have come against British targets on the day that George Bush is visiting London.” Her argument repeated a commonly heard nationalist theme that “Bush’s war” is hurting “our interests” by making Britain vulnerable to “terrorism.”  [Source]

The stressful mental zig-zags imposed on such forces are only increasing today.  German's arguments in her statement on Ukraine show this. They resuscitate positions

1.  Who is the aggressor?  The obvious answer seems to be that it is Russia, but....

A variety of rationalizations follow to excuse Moscow's war moves against Kiev

3.  US secretary of state John Kerry has made strong statements condemning Russia, and British prime minister David Cameron has argued against intervention and for national sovereignty. No one should take lessons from people who invaded Afghanistan and Iraq and bombed Libya....

Pointing out the utter hypocrisy of the capitalist ruling class, especially in imperialist countries, is only the beginning of knowledge.  To do so in order to absolve another capitalist state - in this case, Russia - deliberately misleads when clarity is vital.

But rationalizations on behalf Putin are still to come.  It seems Russia's "president in permanence" is simply a Great Power chess piece on the geopolitical game board:

6.  The United States is centrally involved. It oversaw the removal of Yanukovich, and its neocons are desperately trying to develop an excuse for war with the Russians. Neocon former presidential candidate John McCain visited Ukraine and addressed the demonstrations in Kiev. As did Victoria Nuland, assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs in the US state department. Nuland is most famous for her recently leaked phone conversation about micromanaging regime change in Ukraine, in which she declared 'fuck the EU.' Her husband is neocon Robert Kagan, who was co-founder of the Project for the New American Century, the ideological parent of the Bush/Blair war on Iraq

The remaining points can be thus summarized:

7.  Maidan protestors in Ukraine have no justified grievances against the recently ousted Yanukovych regime [austerity, anti-democratic laws, cop violence, Russian suzerainty in national politics].  The Maidan social explosion, instead, is the product of forces with a "direct lineage from the collaborators with the Nazis from 1941 onwards...."

8.  Russophone speakers in Crimea do not oppose Russia, so why get so worked up?

9.  UK activists cannot demand Russian hands off Ukraine.

I will quote section 10 in full, since it sums up StW's politics so perfectly:

10.  The crisis in Ukraine has much to do with the situation in Syria, where major powers are intervening in the civil war. The defeat for intervention last year has infuriated the neocons. They are determined to start new wars. After the US failures in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria, the neocons are looking for a defeat of Russia over Ukraine, and by extension, China too. The situation is developing into a new cold war. The rivalry between the west and Russia threatens to explode into a much larger war than has been seen for many years.

--

In the U.S. the "neocon conspiracy" dropped off the politial radar after Obama's 2009 inauguration.  But it now reemerges as the middle class left contorts itself over the profound historical and social contradictions bound-up with the Ukraine events.

In this way, while fulfilling its general role as a transmission belt for bourgeois values in the working class, left forces are also able to plow a little ground for Jew-hatred.

What is the "neocon" conspiracy to which StW attributes such world-changing power?

In a 2004 article in The Militant, Sam Manuel writes:

Over the past year there has been a spate of articles by liberal and middle-class radical commentators, as well as by rightists, that attack the Bush administration by claiming that today U.S. foreign and military policy is being orchestrated by a small group of “neoconservatives” in the Defense Department. They often point to Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith, former Pentagon advisor Richard Perle, and other high-ranking officials.

Some of these commentators go further, pointing to officials with Jewish names and implying or saying that a Jewish “neocon cabal” is involved.

Such "ideas" are not simply the happy hunting ground of Patrick Buchanan and Lyndon LaRouch. They are also an attempt by radicals and leftists promoting the Democratic Party to rationalize bipartisan US foreign policy.

In another 2004 article in The Militant, Manuel writes:

.... the U.S. government is carrying out the most far-reaching shift in military strategy and organization since the second world imperialist war. With the end of the Cold War, the U.S. rulers are compelled to take steps to confront sharper competition from their imperialist rivals and prepare to take on more directly the resistance by workers and farmers to the effects of the deepening world capitalist crisis. Under the banner of the “global war on terrorism,” they are transforming the U.S. armed forces into a lighter, more mobile military better suited to fight the kinds of wars U.S. imperialism will have to pursue around the world.

No wing of the Democrats or Republicans has offered an alternative to this bipartisan foreign policy course. The tone of bourgeois politics in the United States, however, has become more shrill and intense. This growing factionalism among capitalist politicians is a result of the frustration by the U.S. rulers about their vulnerability in face of a future of sharpening economic crises, wars, and uncontrollable forces set in motion by these changes. 

‘Neocons’ responsible for Iraq war?
In this context some liberal Democratic politicians and commentators, in attacking their Republican rivals, resort to the false and misleading charge that a secretive “neoconservative” group is shaping U.S. foreign policy and betraying “American interests.” These assertions obscure the fact that U.S. foreign policy is bipartisan, that the Bush administration is acting on behalf of the U.S. ruling class, and that this policy does serve their class interests.

In a typical commentary, Newark Star-Ledger columnist John Farmer decries “the neoconservatives around Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld who, with Vice President Dick Cheney as their enabler, authored the misadventure in Iraq.” He identifies former deputy defense secretary Paul Wolfowitz, former undersecretary of defense Douglas Feith, and former Pentagon advisor Richard Perle as among these.

In their 83-page paper titled “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy,” Harvard dean Walt and University of Chicago professor Mearsheimer marshal their arguments to contend that “the overall thrust of U.S. policy in the [Mideast] region is due almost entirely to U.S. domestic politics, and especially to the activities of the ‘Israel Lobby.’” They add that “the unmatched power of the Israel Lobby” has made Washington pursue policies beneficial to the Israeli government but not to “the American national interest.”

They argue that “the core of the Lobby is comprised of American Jews” who seek “to bend U.S. foreign policy so that it advances Israel’s interests,” together with “neoconservative gentiles.” According to them, the so-called lobby not only includes Bush administration officials such as Wolfowitz and Feith, but that it controls the editorial boards of newspapers such as the New York Times and Wall Street Journal and has decisive influence in the Brookings Institution, American Enterprise Institute, and other major think tanks.

Walt and Mearsheimer claim the “Israel lobby” and “neoconservatives” were the driving force behind the 2003 U.S. invasion in Iraq. “The Bush administration’s ambitious strategy to transform the Middle East—beginning with the invasion of Iraq—is at least partly intended to improve Israel’s strategic situation,” they assert. 

Anti-Semitic arguments
The article by James Petras, entitled “The Tyranny of Israel Over America,” churns out the same argument and reeks with the same anti-Semitism and American nationalism. The only difference is that Petras has long portrayed himself as a socialist and anti-imperialist.

Petras quotes anonymous FBI “sources” to claim “large-scale deep penetration of American society and the government by Israeli spies and their collaborators” who fed “disinformation” to the U.S. government to persuade Washington to launch the war against Iraq. He too attributes U.S. foreign policy to the influence of “Feith, Wolfowitz, Perle, and other Zioncons closely identified with Israeli intelligence.”

Petras describes the invasion of Iraq as a war “in the service of Israel” that went against “U.S. good sense and national interest.”

Not surprisingly, Walt’s “research” paper won hearty applause from ultrarightist David Duke, the former Ku Klux Klan leader. On his web site davidduke.com, he praised the Harvard dean for revealing “how these Jewish extremists have manipulated American policy against the clear interests of the American people.” 

Who sets U.S. foreign policy?
These assertions about “neoconservative” and even “Jewish” control over Washington’s policies in the Mideast are fraudulent and reactionary. First, the leading figures in the alleged “neocon conspiracy” such as Wolfowitz and Feith, are no longer in the Bush administration. Second, none of the central officials responsible for Washington’s policy in Iraq—Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld—are Jewish.

Last week’s article noted that, while William Kristol’s Weekly Standard and other so-called neoconservatives were among those who in 1997-98 began to campaign for taking steps to overthrow the Saddam Hussein government, this course toward “regime change” predominated among most in the ruling class and became official policy under the Clinton administration.

The conspiracy theories, including the Jew-hating varieties, let the U.S. capitalists off the hook while promoting American nationalism. U.S. imperialism’s foreign policy, far from being hijacked by some isolated group, is controlled by and represents the interests of a class: the wealthy billionaire families who rule the United States, including both their parties, the Democrats and Republicans. 

-- 

Confusion among workers hungry for a correct appraisal of events is successfully combined with promotion of conspiracy theories blaming Jews for capitalism's growing world disorder.

The "neocon" conspiracy theory embraced by middle class leftists and radicals is also part of a more general political obscurantism.  It hides from  workers the class basis of US foreign policy.  It is ready-made for explaining-away mass mobilizations and historical social explosions like that occurring in Ukraine today.  In it, our class become puppets and pawns, powerless and easily beaten as a class and incapable of building a revolutionary socialist leadership to fight for power.

A fellow Marxist on Facebook summed it up the StW statement this way:

Again with the "neocons" and "neoliberals" - this construct substitutes an ideological battle [between "progressives" & "anti-imperialists" against the "neos"] for class formations. It is a way around the direct critique of capital, and direct advocacy of the social interests of our class.

(A more complete recapitulation of Sam Manuel's Militant articles on the "neocon" conspiracy  can be found here.)

Jay
4 March 2014

Ukraine and the petty bourgeois left: Reading notes

This week I have been reading the 1946 document "Revolutionary Marxism or Petty Bourgeois Revisionism? A Demarcation of the Programs of the Socialist Workers Party and the Workers Party. Statement by the Political Committee of the Socialist Workers Party."

The document can be read here.

While reading, I was also following events in Ukraine, and commenting on them on Facebook.

Notes I made turned out to be clarification of issues relating to Ukraine today as they are misinterpreted and obscured by the petty bourgeois left.  

To borrow a phrase from the 1946 SWP document, "along with abstentionism.... [they have] raised eclecticism and inconsistency to the level of guiding principles.  Nor is this an accidental phenomenon.  There is one class in modern society that cannot be consistent in its politics.  This is the petty bourgeoisie."

 

Who wants a 'man on horseback'?

Petty bourgeois left today internationally: a miasma of capitulation to Putin concerning Ukraine.

*

"Popular Front" today? Defense of capitalist regimes that are supposedly objectively anti-US.  But such regimes are unwilling and incapable of organizing the working class in their own countries to fight Washington.  They fear calling masses together for any reason.

*

It is true that the US today is trying to encircle Russia [and China.]

Must the working class in Russia and Ukraine subordinate all to Putin's pragmatic and supposedly consistent anti-Americanism?

Should workers in Russia, Ukraine, [and the US, for that matter] be told [in the name of communism or radicalism or "anti-capitalism"]  that Putin is their ally?

*

European Union is not a "capitalist United States of Europe" with one nefarious program orchestrated by Washington.

*

Presenting Russia today as objectively anti-imperialist and anti-fascist is dishonest to the point of treachery.  The line breeds demobilization and defeatist consciousness. 

Some workers and middle class elements taught to look to Russia as a progressive anti-US pole in [bourgeois politics] will [in the absence of a growing communist movement] be attracted to rightist solutions out of demoralization and concomitant cynicism.

*

Petty bourgeois left and Stalinist organizations and individuals today dishonestly present Putin as [albeit an inconsistent] fighter against US imperialism who must be defended.  They present social explosions that oppose interests of the Russian ruling class as nefarious conspiracies organized by Republican politicians and the CIA.

This endorsement of Putin can mislead and divert initial motion toward independent working class political action and class consciousness.

*

The "lesser evil international" - anti-US "coalition" of bourgeois states [Russia, Iran, Syria, Venezuela] must be defended [so the middle class left declaims].

For the middle class left, Putin must be defended at all costs. Russian workers and farmers, it is assumed, have interests in complete consonance with Putin's regime. 

*

Workers in Ukraine are told to wait to defend their living standards and democratic rights because these actions supposedly coincide with Washington's "anti-Moscow" line.  It is "too dangerous" now to begin the slow and contradictory awakening political life and class consciousness.]  Hence the fascist-baiting of inevitable capitalist-bred social explosions.

[n.b.: Imagine telling Fannie Lou Hamer not to oppose LBJ in 1964 because the most important issue was "defeating Goldwater at all costs"?]

[n.b.: Must workers at VW or Walmart wait until they have Simon-pure class consciousness before they begin their struggle?]

*

The "Russian Question today"

Organizations like Workers World Party [which I take to be emblematic of this international trend - JR] enjoy the luxury of condemning the "dictatorship of capital" in Russia in the abstract, while providing left-cover [and disorienting the working class internationally in the process] with concrete rationalizations for specific Russian policies.  They slur-over and obscure the class line when it suits them.

[n.b.: supporting Russia and its Ukrainian cats-paws like Yanukovych today in the name of defeating "US/EU-backed Ukrainian fascism."]

*

Ukraine - workers and middle class elements in the streets fought [using their own mass methods] austerity, the growing capitalist social crisis [an international phenomenon], the Kiev government's anti-democratic and oppressive laws, and the Kiev government's latest capitulation to Moscow [yet another chapter in 300 years of national oppression by Russia in Ukraine.] 

This mass action was not a de facto endorsement of any program or banners or slogans of any self-identified "leaders" of the Maidan protests.

*

There is no "third way" between the dictatorship of capital and the Leninist strategy of building proletarian communist parties, the "road to workers power."

[n.b. Germany and Spain in the 1930s, Indonesia in 1965 are tragic confirmation of this.]

Capitalist Putin is not a stand-in for working class leadership today because the Russian bourgeoisie finds itself cross-wise to Washington  today.

*

n.b.: Mass action opposing austerity, national oppression, capitulation to Russian suzerainty, and attacks on democratic rights
is progressive.

*

As a friend on Facebook summed up:

For the defeat of U.S. imperialism everywhere! And Stalinist and proto-Stalinist great nation chauvinism and national oppression as well!

Jay
3 March 2014

Increased visits from Ukraine

First two days of March:

United States 5050

Ukraine 1774

United Kingdom 730

Russia 379

Germany 306

France 210

Canada 190

India 180

China 116

Poland 89