Trotskyists Debate the Character of the Ukraine War
We present here translations of letters from an ongoing discussion with the GOI (Workers Internationalist Group) of Brazil. The letter from the GOI is posted below the response by our comrades of the GRT (Revolutionary Workers Group) of Brazil.
Also provided is the link to the original letters in Portuguese:
Grupo de Trabalhadores Revolucionários do Brasil (Revolutionary Workers Group of Brazil) (GTR-BR)
The following is the response from the ILTT to the GOI:
Response to GOI letter to ILTT
GOI comrades, thank you for your letter.
We hope to continue the discussion and be able to deepen the issue of China and Russia being imperialist countries and how this happened, affirming the Leninist theory of imperialism. And not with empiricism, as we have seen some currents coming to this conclusion contradicting Lenin and thinking it possible for a semi colony, in imperialist times, to develop its productive forces and become an imperialist country. We affirm Lenin’s theory that in imperialist times it is not possible for a semi colony to gain independence from imperialism; China and Russia developed their productive forces with the socialist revolution and by returning to the capitalist sphere they were able to maintain their independence of imperialism and are now the main rivals of American imperialism.
On the war in Ukraine, the GOI in its letter says it has two main disagreements with the ILTT, the character of the Ukrainian state and the characterization of an inter-imperialist conflict we make of the war in Ukraine and, consequently, our policy of dual defeatism.
“The first is about the character of Ukraine as a nation. Your position on this is dubious, and some elements of the analysis and, above all, of the policy you propose let us see that you do not consider Ukraine a nation.”
“However, as we have already set out above, by not recognizing the character of Ukraine as a nation, by refusing to raise a policy of military unity of action in Ukraine to defeat and expel Putin’s troops and propose as a central policy the “revolutionary defeatism”, you end up diluting the struggle of the Ukrainian masses for national independence in the general struggle of the proletariat against imperialism and the socialist revolution, well to the mode of Parabellun and Rosa Luxembourg.”
We agree that class character in the Ukraine war is our big difference. We affirm that the war is inter imperialist between the US/EU imperialist bloc and Russian imperialism. This brings us to the position of Revolutionary Defeatism (Dual defeatism). Ukraine’s national question of independence and self-determination is directly linked to the international issue. Understanding the character of inter imperialist conflict and revolutionary defeatism is fundamental to transform anti imperialist warfare into class warfare and not capitulate to one of the imperialist blocs, to the Popular Front (PF), to social imperialism and national Trotskyism on the issue of national independence and self-determination. Faced with the terminal crisis of capitalism, combined with climate change and inter imperialist wars, that is, socialism or extinction, the revolutionary left shows its bankruptcy divided between supporting either imperialist bloc in Ukraine. That’s why today we make a call to a New Zimmerwald!
First we want to make clear that the GOI misinterpret our characterization of the Ukrainian state. We affirm in our article “The counter-revolution and capitalist restoration in Ukraine have put back on the agenda the unfinished tasks of the national democratic revolution; tasks that can only be carried out by a workers’ state in an Independent Soviet Ukraine.” As we have stated in other documents, we defend the unity of Ukraine, including Crimea, in the struggle for national independence and self-determination of peoples.
Today, both imperialisms wage war in Ukraine, acting to divide and crush the working class with nationalism, chauvinism and fascism. We don’t need the U.S. and Europe to put their boots on Ukraine to claim that this is an inter imperialist war. Zelensky is only the procurator of American and European imperialism, and Ukraine is the ground of inter imperialist dispute.
U.S.-led NATO may never officially put its boots on Ukraine’s ground if it can win with regime change and funding the hot war disguised as a national liberation war. This is what inter imperialist warfare looks like.
Today we have seen many left-wing organizations in the imperialist countries of the West, which in the past were vociferating against American imperialism, capitulate to their national bourgeoisie supporting Ukraine. They do not see sanctions as a direct inter imperialist war and reject the class for the ‘people’, so they help imperialism to push workers beyond necessary self-defense to becoming cannon fodder.. They fall into the social-imperialist field.
National Independence and Self determination
The Leninist position of self-determination is stated in our article, which the GOI also misinterpret:
“The comrades, in their statement, do not make clear whether they claim Lenin’s positions on the right to self-determination of nations, and it seems that they seek to counter them to the theory of the Permanent Revolution, taking Kowalewski’s criticism of Lenin and Bolsheviks’ “mistakes and lack of strategy” in relation to the Ukrainian national issue during the Russian Revolution.”
We quote the article to restate the significant point that it was the communists in Ukraine themselves who adopted the theory of the permanent revolution actively against Russian chauvinism among the Bolsheviks; “such were the limitations of the movement under Tsarism, its base in Ukraine was centered among the Russified workers of the industrial and mining centers of the east and the local and national center of Bolshevism was neither informed nor integrated with the leaders of the Ukrainian-speaking masses.” Lenin lost sight of self-determination in his 1914 declaration about Ukraine being Russia’s “Ireland.” Only after seeing how the impact of chauvinism probably had a hand in stymying the spread of the revolution to Europe through Ukraine, Poland and Hungary Lenin returned to it, and the civil war was won under the motto of a free and independent Soviet Ukraine.
We continued to say in our article: “The tasks of the national democratic revolution in Ukraine were so deeply intertwined with the struggle for self-determination that the fate of internationalization and the victory of the Russian Revolution depended on it.”
“Today, the fate of the world lies in the ability of the international proletariat to see the permanent revolution linked to the national revolution of the semi-colonies, always under attack from the permanent counter-revolution by both the imperialist US/UK/EU bloc and the imperialist Russia/China bloc.”
Gaining national independence and self-determination of the people of Donbass and Crimea is only possible with the unity of the working class and the socialist revolution. The national bourgeoisie, in imperialist times, is not able to fulfill democratic tasks and carry out the democratic revolution. This is the task of the working class carrying out the socialist revolution. This is an issue that the GOI says it agrees with, but we will show how the GOI capitulates to the national bourgeoisie and “democratic” imperialism, with a national-Trotskyist policy.
To support Kiev and the US/EU/UK imperialist bloc is not to support democratic demands for independence and self-determination. Nor is it strengthening the working class’s struggle for permanent revolution. It is yes, to divide the class by supporting the fascists in the attacks on workers using ethnic differences and language, and to support the imperialist side of the U.S. in the war against the Russia/China bloc. The GOI’s lack of understanding that this is an inter imperialist war makes them capitulate to the “democratic” imperialism of the US/EU and social imperialism.
Self-determination
The GOI asks: “But, we ask the comrades, is it right to propose the policy of revolutionary defeatism to the proletariat and the Ukrainian people who are in arms against Russian troops? Would it be correct to propose that they do not fight against the invading army, and instead turn their weapons, at this time, against the officers of the Ukrainian Army, who are currently organize them, at this moment militias to confront the Azov Brigade and other fascist and semi-fascist groups militarily?”
Answering the GOI question: Yes! We think it’s “right now” that workers should build independent armed committees! This is a great opportunity that should be used for the formation of working class militias!
We have to go back to 2014. After the coup d’état that followed the Maidan demonstrations, the workers of the east rose up in a revolutionary process. To crush this process, the Kiev government sent the army soldiers to bomb the workers. The movement of mothers of soldiers against sending their children to kill their brothers in the east was already beginning to emerge, when Russia began to intervene on the side of the revolutionaries. With the excuse of “helping” the uprising, Russia managed to end the revolutionary process by replacing the leadership with its supporters, when many “disappeared”. With the great Russian chauvinism, Putin advanced in the division of the working class of the west, promoted the separatist plebiscite and annexed Crimea. Similarly, the Kiev government attacked the revolution by promoting national chauvinism, fueling fascist forces and oppression of Russian-speakers, thereby preventing any working-class unity against Kiev’s war against workers in the east.
Now we ask the GOI: How is it possible to unite the working class against the Russian invasion, supporting the Kiev government that divides the class, and that increasingly has to rely on fascism and national chauvinism? How to gain independence and fight the Russian invaders by teaming up with Zelensky and the fascists who for eight years bombed the workers of the east?
No self-determination for minorities? Don’t you think Russian speakers can also join the resistance to the Putin regime?
“Heroic Ukrainian resistance??? Resistance is with Class Independence!
In the letter the GOI says:
“If we had a Trotskyist group or party in Ukraine (which, unfortunately, is not the case!), what would be the policy to be applied to the Ukrainian working class, which today organizes armed militias in trade unions and organizes itself in popular neighborhoods and villages in various ways to fight Putin’s troops? We have no doubt that we should take the weapons to fight alongside the proletariat and the other sectors of the Ukrainian people in their heroic resistance to the Russian invasion.”
The “hero” Zelensky, receiving weapons from western imperialism, fighting Russian imperialism in a proxy war, attacking and dividing the class and using it as cannon fodder, is not a “heroic resistance of the Ukrainian people”.
It is true that many workers and young people have volunteered to take up arms to defend themselves and are willing to fight the Russian invasion. We think that local committees have emerged with people taking up arms to defend themselves and that the government should not have full control. But they are volunteers to help the regular army and we see no movement of criticism against the government and direction of class independence. An opportunity that should be used for the formation of workers’ militias, who are independent, that would challenge the Kiev government and call the workers of the east to unity. So we say that joining the resistance of the Ukrainian “people”, as the GOI says, is capitulating to the Popular Front and that the policy of revolutionary defeatism is the one that can lead to the independence of the armed committees of the workers towards the program of the Permanent Revolution, to independence and self-determination, to the Socialist revolution. For us, war is one thing, class warfare.
Paraphrasing Lenin on the fight against Kornilov, the GOI says: “Today, we support our rifle on Zelenski’s shoulders to shoot Putin. And tomorrow, defeated and expelled Putin’s army, we will settle our accounts with Zelenski and the fascists.”
In the Syrian revolution, we can talk about the heroic resistance of the people and that we could support the “fascists”! Militias of workers and poor people formed and were resisting both the Assad government and Russian imperialism, as well as the attacks of American imperialism and its Kurdish allies. In this real resistance, we militarily support the small bourgeois Islamic fundamentalist direction and the “fascists” of ISIS when fighting U.S. imperialism in northeastern Syria and Iraq. That is to support even fascists against imperialism, as Trotsky said. Fighting imperialism advances the struggle of workers.
Obviously, we will not be strengthening the ongoing revolution on the side of Zelensky and the fascists fighting as U.S. bloc prosecutors, dividing and slaughtering the eastern Ukrainian masses in an inter imperialist dispute.
The war in Ukraine from the beginning has been a proxy war between the US/NATO and Russia (targeting China), so all weapons going to Ukraine must be stopped. There is still no ‘resistance’ to say that it is independent of Zelensky’s proxy regime. Workers and small farmers caught up in this war are sacrificial pawns of an inter imperialist war. Whatever imperialist side wins, workers and small farmers lose. At the time of the inter imperialist wars by proxy, all wars, except class warfare, are reactionary. Ukraine’s self-determination cannot be achieved without the socialist revolution. This means building independent workers’ militias to resist both the imperialist blocs and their representatives, and arm themselves with the international help of the workers.
Dual defeatism vs. Popular Front (PF)
Revolutionary defeatism, that is, the armed committees of the workers should not “help” the regular army, must have class independence, unite the workers of east and west, fight the fascists and nationalists of both the Kiev/ U.S. imperialist bloc, as well as those of the imperialist east/Russia. Only with class independence is it possible to advance the permanent revolution, joining the democratic demands (independence and self-determination) with the socialist revolution, the only one capable of achieving these demands. No unity with the Ukrainian bourgeoisie! No support for one side in the inter imperialist dispute!
We see no difference in the position of the GOI with the position of the PSTU. First the bourgeois democratic revolution, then the socialist revolution. The “moment” to build armed committees of workers never comes. We evaluate this as a deviation of Morenoism, of which we are not aware that GOI has broken.
As the revolution “is not possible”, in the “concrete” situation as they like to say, they unite with the “progressive” bourgeoisie and together still with the fascists, dividing the working class that has been bombed and attacked by them for 8 years.
They capitulate to democratic Imperialism and Social Imperialists. It is a historical capitulation of Morenoism to democratic imperialism, as when they sided with Yeltsin’s “democracy” against the Stalinist “dictatorship” for capitalist restoration in the former USSR.
The social imperialism, which on the basis of the labor aristocracy would operate and enjoy greater privileges and democracy at the expense of oppression and military governments (fascists) in the semi colonies, fighting for “good” capitalism in imperialist countries. In semi colonies, social imperialism translates into national Trotskyism, which, based on the union bureaucracy, joins the “progressive” national bourgeoisie in People’s Fronts to combat imperialism.
For the PSTU, in Brazil “it is not possible” to overthrow Bolsonaro. Although the metalworkers of the union who run have made several strikes and mobilizations, the leadership never think they should strike for “Fora” (Out With) Bolsonaro, Against Pension Reform or Labor Laws. The program is always in economics. Lula, PT and CUT have no policy for the fight to overthrow Bolsonaro, only for the elections. The PSTU policy boils down to dispute for the union apparatus with the PT bureaucracy and the “Fora Bolsonaro” movement carried forward on the bureaucratic front with the union centers. In the elections, they present candidates “only” to make the party visible in the second round, supporting the Popular Front (since 2002!).
That’s because the PSTU has a reform program. Just as the PT and company program replaces workers in the fight for parliament, the PSTU replaces them with the union bureaucracy. Your program never goes all the way, it’s never the “time” to advance the Permanent Revolution program until the takeover, the program gets in the middle of it, in the way.
We perceive the same policy in the statements of GOI, its program for workers’ strikes do not go to the end. In the elections in 2018 and now, in 2022, the correct demands that must be made to the PT and the reformist left become the capitulating program of GOI calling to a candidacy “Lula without the bosses” when the PT is already even in a federation with the parties of the bourgeoisie (as well as the PSOL) not to present the program of the Permanent Revolution (because it is not yet the time) and support the Popular Front in the second round.
Once again it is seen that the Leninist-Trotskyist position that the bourgeoisie is not progressive in the imperialist era, which the GOI says it agrees with, does not materialize in its politics. This is the basis for Lenin and Trotsky to wage a tireless battle with the Popular Front “…supporting the gun on Kerensky’s shoulder to hit Kornilov” was never a reason to support the PF; on the one hand, he understood that the PF was not able to fight fascism and on the other to unmask it.
It was this position that the PSTU failed to have in the impeachment of Dilma. As the PT and PF could not combat the maneuvers of its own “progressive” bourgeois allies, the PSTU decided not to fight the bourgeoisie, but to support it, not having fought against impeachment. Likewise, to this day they underestimate and do not mobilize workers to fight the ascendant fascism and threat of military coup with class independence. Their denial in seeing the fascist threat makes it clear that they defend the PF to fight for it, as we saw in impeachment, in the second round of bourgeois elections in 2018 and now.
Inter imperialist War USA/EU/NATO vs Russia/China, and For a New Zimmerwald
Since 2010 we have given a battle to convince workers that China and Russia are rising imperialism and great rivals of American imperialism. We fight Stalinist sectors and false Trotskyists who do not see Russia and China as imperialists and who support them in a large PF along with Castro-Chavismo, as an “anti capitalist” alternative in a “multipolar” world. They have abandoned the struggle for the workers’ revolution for good.
Not seeing the class character in the inter imperialist war in Ukraine leads to the mistaken policy of not positioning itself for dual defeatism and not to prevent weapons from going to the ‘resistance’. Its pretexts are that US/NATO is not ‘yet’ involved in direct warfare, so the national war dominates. Result cannot be other than giving in to the pressure to join the ‘popular front’ with the ‘democratic’ imperialism of the USA.
This is the division of the left today, which, as in 2014, supports either imperialism in dispute and shows its total bankruptcy. So we want to help build a new Zimmerwald Left in response to this inter imperialist war.
For Class Independence and the World Party of the Socialist Revolution, based on the 1938 program! Faced with the terminal crisis of capitalism, socialism or extinction!
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The following is the original letter to the ILTT from the GOI:
Response to the Trotskyist Leninist International Trend – TLTI Comrades of the Trotskyist Leninist Trend – TLTI
First of all, welcome our revolutionary greeting and our satisfaction in debating among us such an important issue for the class struggle of the world proletariat.
Already before the outbreak of the war in Ukraine we started contacts aimed at a meeting between our organizations to deal with international and national issues (Brazil). War, of course, is the main issue at the moment.
We began the study of his analyses on the post-restoration imperialism of capitalism in the former bureaucratic working states, and the role of China and Russia today, a theme that we want to deepen the discussion among ourselves. However, we will deal in this text centrally on the war in Ukraine, demarcating the points of agreement and differences with your analyses and policy, based on his statement “Defeat the imperialist war! For a Ukraine of Independent Workers!”
We’ll start by demarcato the points accordingly.
First, we agree that Russia’s military intervention in Ukraine has a counterrevolutionary character, as does previous interventions in Syria and other countries. Contrary to what Stalinists, castrists, Chavistas and their spokespersons claim in Brazil (PCdoB, Diário do Centro do Mundo, Maringoni, etc.), including organizations calling themselves Trotskyists, such as the PCO and LBI, Putin’s capitalist Russia plays no anti-imperialist role in world class struggle. The propaganda of these currents and spokesmen only echoes putin’s deceptive war propaganda, which seeks to rely on the glorious history of the Red Army of the former USSR, which defeated the bourgeois-imperialist counterrevolution in the years of the civil war of the Russian Revolution (1918-1921), and that even after the Stalinist degeneration of the Worker State (and its Red Army), was decisive for the defeat of fascism in Europe in World War II. Putin’s Russian army, in the service of the economic and political interests of the Russian bourgeoisie, is nothing more than a counterrevolutionary force to threaten, oppress and crush the weakest peoples and nations, oppressed in the past by Tsaristism and stalin’s regime. Imperialist Russia, under Putin, resumes the old militaristic and imperialist traditions of Tsaristism, seeking to cover them with images of the revolutionary moments of the Red Army, mixed with Stalinist verborragia.
It is necessary to recall the famous statement of the Prussian general von Clausewitz, that “War is the continuation of politics by other means”, which, put in Marxist terms, means that war is the continuation of the class struggle for the violence of arms. The capitalist restoration in the former working states, by deepening the exploitation and misery of the working masses, brought with it the deepening of the class struggle in these countries. Ukraine is experiencing a revolutionary situation, heist by the disputes between two sectors of the new bourgeoisie, which seek to impose on the nation their class interests, some as minor partners of U.S./EU imperialism and others as smaller partners of Russia. Similar situations also occur in Kazakhstan, Belarus, Armenia, Azerbaijan and other republics of the former USSR. In Russia itself, Putin’s dictatorship is the bonapartist regime needed to maintain the exploitation of the proletariat by the bourgeois mafias that took over the country’s productive forces after the restoration. The war against Ukraine aims to crush the proletariat’s struggle in Ukraine, frighten the peoples of neighboring former Soviet republics and strengthen Putin’s dictatorial regime in Russia.
Second, we have an agreement that it is necessary to unmask the imperialism of the United States and the European Union in its supposed role as guardian of democracy and peace in the world, which would put it in the position of “protector of Ukraine,” official propaganda carried by Biden, followed by his NATO allies and their doormats in semicolonial countries. The imperialist policy of recolonization of the former working states of Eastern Europe, the deepening of the exploitation and oppression of the world proletariat as a way out of the structural crisis of capitalism, is what brings back the war in Europe, updating Lenin’s predictions that we live in a time of wars and revolutions caused by the decline of imperialism. At this time there are at least seven conflicts in Africa and Asia: Ethiopia, Yemen, Myanmar, Syria, South Sudan and Afghanistan.
Imperialism has always used war against peoples and nations who dare to challenge it. Russian imperialism under Putin does nothing but follow this trend of destruction of productive forces caused by the deadly agony of imperialism.
These two agreements with your position also lead us to have the common understanding that any political alignment with the dominant imperialism of the United States-EU or the new defiant capitalist bloc headed by Russia and China (which covers Putin in his war of aggression against Ukraine) is inadmissible. The world socialist revolution is the only way out of the proletariat in the face of imperialist barbarism.
However, despite these important agreements, we have major differences in analysis and policy that we are going to set out next.
The first is about the character of Ukraine as a nation. Your position on this is dubious, and some elements of the analysis and above all of the policy you propose let us see that you do not consider Ukraine a nation.
The comrades claim that in Ukraine there is an “appearance of state for their national bourgeoisie” (our griffin). And that the Ukrainian bourgeoisie “does not have the economic power to guarantee the independence of imperialism.” However, the Ukrainian bourgeoisie, like all the national bourgeoisie of semicolonial countries, has no economic power to guarantee the independence from imperialism, so they are obliged to share with the large imperialist corporations the added value of the exploitation of the proletariat in these countries. This is the situation in Brazil, Poland, South Africa in Pakistan, just to name a few countries from different continents. However, imperialist domination did not suppress the existence of national states controlled by these more depressed national bourgeoisie. Therefore, the Marxist concept of semicolonial nations, which means that the national bourgeoisie, despite “not having the economic power to guarantee the independence of imperialism”, maintains national states with a certain degree of political independence from imperialism. We believe that this is the case in Ukraine, where there is a national bourgeoisie that controls a national state, in the landmarks of imperialist domination.
More troubling are the dubious statements of his document on the national character of Ukraine. “With a pro-Western imperialist government and economic agreements and ties with the West, Ukraine is now subordinate dweller to western capital, but still linked to Russia by mutual cultural history, language, proximity, families, businesses and claims competing with the region’s resources. Or, as Putin cynically states, “it is an inalienable part of our own history, culture, and spiritual space” (our griffins). Certainly, Zelemski’s government is nothing more than a NATO puppet, just as the governments that have preceded him since the capitalist restoration were puppets, or Russian imperialism, or “Western” imperialism. But what do you mean by reproducing these putin’s words without condemning them openly? Their problem is not just “cynicism”, but they are false to the marrow! The history of Ukraine is marked above all by the aggressions of The Grand-Russian Chauvinism, beginning with the chauvinism of Tsaristism, through Stalinist chauvinism and now Putin’s chauvinism. Only during the short period of the Russian Revolution (1917 to 1924) did the proletariat and the poor peasants of Russia and Ukraine be able to know a true socialist and internationalist solidarity among their peoples in the common fight against the bourgeoisie and national landowners allied to imperialism. And also, despite the Stalinist direction, during the fighting to drive Hitler’s troops out of the territory of the USSR in World War II.
However, let us, for a moment, consider that the characterization that there is no national state in Ukraine is correct. That would deny nothing the existence of a struggle for the national independence of Ukraine, which today is taking place in a war of resistance to the Russian invasion, which is mobilizing all classes in the country. Let’s remember the national issue of the Kurds and the Palestinians. We could say, taking your words, that the Kurdish bourgeoisie and the Palestinian bourgeoisie “do not have the economic power to guarantee the independence of imperialism”, and even more: it does not even have an “appearance of state”, because, to this day, they have not had the political and military power to constitute a semicolonial national state. Nevertheless, it is undeniable that there is a historical struggle between the Kurdish people and the Palestinian people for the formation of a national state.
Your misunderstanding of the national character of Ukraine, by considering it as only “the border land, [which] has been in the middle for centuries,” will lead to a misunderstanding about the character of the ongoing war, which you characterize as being “an interimperialist war for ukraine’s material resources and geostrategic advantages.” And here lies our second big difference with you.
There can be no doubt that both US/EU imperialism and Russia’s imperialism dispute Ukraine’s “material resources and geostrategic advantages,” and, we add, the extraction of the added value of the Ukrainian proletariat. However, at this time, what we have is a war of invasion of Ukraine by Russia and a fierce resistance opposed by the Ukrainian people. This is the character of the war: a war of resistance of the people of Ukraine against the invasion of their territory by the imperialism of Russia.
The comrades argue in defense of their thesis of “inter imperialist war” that “NATO is in this war with both feet because sanctions are a political and economic war!”. We add that in addition to economic sanctions, the United States and the European Union are also supplying armaments to the Ukrainian military forces, which makes clear their participation in the war alongside Ukraine, with the aim of strengthening their economic and strategic positions on Ukrainian territory, or, in other words, ensuring the domination of the Ukrainian bourgeoisie sector that responds to the interests of “Western” imperialism.
We have no problem accepting your definition that economic sanctions are “acts of war” or “a political and economic war.” But, precisely, “acts of war” and “political and economic war” are not war, they are palliative measures that seek to prevent the real war, that is, the direct armed confrontation between the imperialist armed forces. Obviously, the entry of NATO military forces directly into the war (which for nothing can be ruled out by the evolution of the circumstances of the war, and there are sectors of imperialism that openly defend this), would lead to a change in the character of the war, and then yes, we could talk about an inter imperialist war, which would directly ore the NATO and Russian armed forces. This would mean an unprecedented escalation since World War II, the crisis of imperialism and an escalation of world-class struggle. We consider that this is the trend for which imperialist debacle points out in the future, but it is not the present situation. And revolutionary politics must respond to the existing war, Russia’s war of imperialist aggression against Ukraine, and not to an inter imperialist war that may occur in the future.
Their misguided analyses of Ukraine’s national character and the character of the war lead them to virtually ignore the struggle for Ukraine’s national independence and not to formulate any consequential policy to support the proletariat and the Ukrainian people who stand up in arms against the Russian invasion. The comrades have as their central axis of their politics the revolutionary defeatism, taking, in our view, in a mistaken way, this policy formulated by Lenin during the First Interimperialist World War I.
Let us remember Lenin’s definitions of revolutionary defeatism:
“The transformation of the current imperialist war into civil war is the only word of just proletarian order, indicated by the experience of the Commune, pointed out by the Basel resolution (1912) and resulting from all the conditions of the imperialist war between the highly developed bourgeois countries.” (War and
“In a reactionary war, the revolutionary class cannot but wish the defeat of his government, can’t help but see the link between the failures and the facilitation of its overthrow.” (Socialism and war. The
attitude of THE POSDR inrelaçãoàguerra,1915), https://www.marxists.org/portugues/lenin/1915/guerra/01.html#c1019
We agree that the policy of revolutionary defeatism must be raised with the proletariat and the poor people of the imperialist countries that dispute, exploit and oppress Ukraine. Firstly, in Russia, with the aim of facilitating the defeat of Putin’s troops in Ukraine and the opening of a revolutionary situation inside Russia that could lead to the overthrow of putin’s dictatorship and bourgeois mafias. In the United States and the imperialist countries of the European Union the policy of revolutionary defeatism also applies, but with an appropriate formulation for the fact that these powers do not yet participate directly in the war. In this sense, we call the world proletariat, and in particular the proletariat of the United States and the European Union, to fight for the dismantling of the imperialist military bases of NATO and the United States, for the withdrawal of troops from the United States from Europe and from all the countries where they are stationed, while requiring them to deliver arms free of charge to the Ukrainian resistance.
But, we ask the comrades, is it right to propose the policy of revolutionary defeatism to the proletariat and the Ukrainian people who are in arms against Russian troops? Would it be right to propose that they do not fight against the invading army, and instead turn their weapons back on the ukrainian army officers, who are currently organizing militias to confront the Azov Brigade and other fascist and semi-fascist groups militarily? In other words, that they turn the war against the Russian invader into a civil war at this time, that is, a class-war within Ukraine? Proposing to the Ukrainian proletariat to apply the policy of defeatism at this time would put us, in practice, that is, on the ground of the current war, alongside Putin’s invading troops, aligning us with Russian imperialism. Which would be a complete mistake.
If we had a Trotskyist group or party in Ukraine (which, unfortunately, is not the case!), what would be the policy to be applied to the Ukrainian working class, which today organizes armed militias in the unions and organizes itself in popular neighborhoods and villages in various ways to fight Against Putin’s troops? We have no doubt that we should take the weapons to fight alongside the proletariat and the other sectors of the Ukrainian people in their heroic resistance to the Russian invasion. This would put us, at this point, in unity of action military with the Ukrainian Army, as well as with all classes and class organizations of the Ukrainian people that today have the common goal of defeating and expelling imperialist troops from Russia. And so that there is no doubt about our position: military action unit including with the Battalion of Azov and other fascist groups.
To use the precise image created by Trotsky to explain the Bolshevik military action unit with Kerensky’s counterrevolutionary government in the confrontation of General Kornilov’s coup during the Russian Revolution: today, we support our rifle on Zelemski’s shoulders to shoot Putin. And tomorrow, defeated and expelled Putin’s army, we will settle our accounts with Zelenski and the fascists. Or, in other words, today, in a unit of military action with all Ukrainian forces fighting, we make the war against the Russian invasion, for tomorrow, with this defeat, we turn the war in defense of Ukraine into civil war by the seizure of power by the proletariat and the poor people.
Your mistaken characterization of the character of war (inter imperialist war), and the mistaken axis of your politics (revolutionary defeatism), inevitably take you into the arms of bourgeois little pacifism, from which you try unsuccessfully to differentiate yourself in your declaration about war.
The comrades claim that “Peace is the cry of moral indignation at seeing the bloodied bodies day after day in all western media.” However, “peace” is not always a revolutionary word of order in the face of wars. It can only fulfill this role when we are facing a war between imperialist nations, as was the case with the consignment of “peace” raised by the Bolsheviks during World War I, which translated the policy of revolutionary defeatism within Russia. But, as we seek to demonstrate, this is not the character of the war in Ukraine. Therefore, the consignment of “peace” in the face of this war (defended by the organizations mentioned in their statement and by Lula, PT, PSOL and other organizations in Brazil), is directly a betrayal of the Ukrainian proletariat, which today gives its life to expel the Russian imperialist aggressor. Peace in Ukraine can only be achieved with the victory of the Ukrainian people in this war, and here passes the fundamental axis of the revolutionary politics of the proletariat in this conflict, which for us translates into the watchword: Alongside the people of Ukraine, by the defeat and expulsion of Putin’s imperialist troops!
The comrades speak abstractly of “bloody bodies”, but there is no line in their statement to show the destruction of Mariupol, the Bucha massacre, the bombings of towns and villages by Putin’s troops that are destroying Ukraine’s productive infrastructure and leaving a trail of thousands of dead and millions of people driven from their homes and lands. The watchword of “Defeat the Russian invasion forces” plays only a decorative and secondary role in the politics you propose in the face of war. At the moment, the proletariat and the Ukrainian people are putting this task into practice, imposing defeats Putin’s “powerful” army in a heroic war of resistance for its national self-determination. The concentration of war in the corridor from Crimea to the Donbass is expected to further increase the carnage and destruction caused by Russia’s occupying army. It is on the trench side of the Ukrainian resistance that must be the revolutionary organizations of the world proletariat.
Our position stems directly from Lenin’s conception of imperialism and the right of nations to national self-determination, which we consider one of the pillars of the revolutionary politics of the world proletariat. Let us remember Lenin’s definitions:
Imperialism is the time of the progressive oppression of nations around the world by a handful of “great” powers, and so the struggle for the international socialist revolution against imperialism is impossible without the recognition of the right of nations to self-determination. “A people that oppresses other peoples cannot be free” (Marx and Engels). A proletariat who admits the slightest violence of his nation on other nations cannot be socialist.
The Socialists cannot achieve their great goal without fighting all the oppression of nations. That is why they must demand that the social democratic parties of the oppressive countries (particularly the so-called ‘great’ powers) recognise and defend the right of oppressed nations to self-determination, and precisely in the political sense of the word, that is, the right to political separation. A socialist from a nation that is a great power or has colonies that does not uphold this right is a chauvinist.
Lenin also polemizes with socialists who, in the name of the socialist revolution, were unaware of or denied the right and struggle of peoples to national self-determination:
“It turns out that Parabellum, in the name of the socialist revolution, disdains a consequently revolutionary program in the democratic domain. This is wrong. The proletariat cannot win only through democracy, that is, by fully realizing democracy and linking at every step of its struggle democratic demands formulated in the most decisive way. It is absurd to owe the socialist revolution and the revolutionary struggle against capitalism to one of the issues of democracy, in this case the national issue. We must combine the revolutionary struggle against capitalism with a revolutionary program and tactic stooever in relation to all democratic demands: republic, militia, election of officials by the people, equal rights of women, self-determination of nations, etc. As long as capitalism exists, all these claims will only be achievable as an exception and yet incompletely and deformed. Relying on existing democracy, unmasking its incomplete character under capitalism, we demand the overthrow of capitalism, the expropriation of the bourgeoisie, as a necessary basis both to liquidate the misery of the masses and for the complete and integral realization of all democratic transformations. Some of these transformations will begin before the overthrow of the bourgeoisie, others during this overthrow, others still after it. The social revolution is not a single battle, but a time with a whole series of battles for each and every one of the issues of economic and democratic transformations, which will only end with the expropriation of the bourgeoisie. It is precisely in the name of this ultimate goal that we must consistently formulate our democratic claims. It is entirely conceivable that the workers of any given country will overthrow the bourgeoisie before the full realization of even one essential democratic transformation. But it is completely inconceivable that the proletariat, as a historical class, can overcome the bourgeoisie if it is not prepared for it by an education in the spirit of more consequential and resolutely revolutionary democratism.” (our griffins). (Proletariat and the right of the self-determination,1915),https://www.marxists.org/portugues/lenin/1915/10/29.ht m
Lenin is part of a fundamental differentiation between the imperialist nationalism of the oppressive countries (chauvinism) and the national struggle of countries oppressed by imperialism, which must be supported unreservedly by the revolutionary socialists. From this definition, Lenin formulates the policy of combining in a single programme the tasks of the socialist revolution with democratic and national tasks. Trotsky, in the process of elaboration of theory of the Permanent Revolution, goes in the same sense as Lenin’s conceptions.
The comrades, in their statement, make it unclear whether they claim Lenin’s positions on the right to self-determination of nations, and it seems that they seek to counter them to the theory of the Permanent Revolution, taking Kowalewski’s criticism of the “mistakes and lack of strategy of Lenin and the Bolsheviks” in relation to the Ukrainian national issue during the Russian Revolution.
The article of Kowalewski (https://lifeonleft.blogspot.com/2022/03/how-ukraine-won-its-independence-in.html? m=1) is very interesting and useful for us to know the intricate history of the struggle for national independence of Ukraine, particularly in the period of the Russian Revolution. From his reading, we initially conclude the following: 1) Kowalewski claims Lenin and Trotsky’s conception that the tasks of the socialist revolution must be combined with the tasks of national independence; 2) considers that Lenin erred in not putting in the party program, in the period prior to the revolution, the struggle for the national liberation of Ukraine, implicitly criticizing Lenin’s algebraic formula of “defending the right to self-determination of nations” (we have no agreement with this criticism of Kowalewski, but with Lenin’s formula, but it fosters an important debate to be developed).
However, nothing in Kowalewski’s article underpins the petty conclusion set out in the introduction to the article, written by Richard Fidler, that “Putin’s account, though colored by the chauvinism of Greater Russia, is partially true.” Which of Putin’s statements can be considered “partially true”? There is no historical drop of truth in Putin’s completely chauvinistic account. What is the purpose of Fidler’s flirtation with Putin’s “colorful chauvinism”?
It was not clear what the fltn comrades’ goal is when he cited Fidler’s introduction and Kowalewski’s article to support his analysis and policy for the current war in Ukraine. While the former flirts with Putin’s chauvinism, the second defends, despite criticism, Lenin’s position, criticized by Putin.
You correctly conclude that “Today, the fate of the world lies in the ability of the international proletariat to see the permanent revolution linked to the national revolution of the semi-colonies.” However, as we have already set out above, by not recognizing the character of Ukraine as a nation, by refusing to raise a policy of military unity of action in Ukraine to defeat and expel Putin’s troops and propose as a central policy the “revolutionary defeatism”, you end up diluting the struggle of the Ukrainian masses for national independence in the general struggle of the proletariat against imperialism and the socialist revolution, well to the mode of Parabellun and Rosa Luxembourg.
We fully agree with his statement that “The counter-revolution and capitalist restoration in Ukraine have put back on the agenda the unfinished tasks of the national democratic revolution; tasks that can only be carried out by a workers’ state in an Independent Soviet Ukraine.” (our griffin). However, to say that the national liberation of Ukraine can only be carried out through the socialist revolution, cannot lead us to be unsure that today the proletariat and the Ukrainian exploited masses set in motion to end the “unfinished tasks of the national democratic revolution”, putting themselves on the warfoot against Putin’s invading troops. And they do so with their conscience and with their current class organization, that is, without a revolutionary direction that can lead their struggle toward an Independent Soviet Ukraine. Faced with the crisis of revolutionary direction, the direction of the national struggle for independence of Ukraine is now in the hands of Zelemski and the fascists. Revolutionary policy has to respond to this contradiction, so the watchword of Independent Soviet Ukraine, as a strategic objective of our program, must be combined with watchwords that respond to the tasks of the moment, that advance the class consciousness of the proletariat mobilized for war against Putin’s troops. It is for this purpose that we formulate the following words of order:
▪Beside the people of Ukraine! For the defeat and expulsion of Putin’s imperialist troops!
▪Worldwide solidarity with the resistance of the people of Ukraine! Organize international brigades of activists to fight alongside the Ukrainian people!
▪No confidence in the Zelenski government, the Ukrainian Army officers, or the bourgeois and fascist directions that are at the forefront of the war!
▪By the formation and strengthening of armed militias self organized by the working class and organized by the unions.
▪Military action unit to defeat and drive out Putin’s invading troops!
▪For the dismantling of nato and the United States imperialist military bases! For the withdrawal of troops from the United States from Europe and all the countries where they are stationed! May NATO countries deliver free armaments to the Ukrainian resistance!
▪For an independent Soviet Ukraine! At the mark of a socialist Europe, governed by the working class, formed by free union between peoples and nations!
▪For the construction of a revolutionary party in Ukraine!
Comrades, we seek to expose our agreements and differences in the most frank and clear way. It is possible that the difficulties derived from the language have led to misunderstandings about their positions, so in advance we apologize. However, we estimate that any misunderstandings may be clarified in the course of a fraternal and open discussion.
Welcome our revolutionary and internationalist embrace!
W. Ioffe – p/ GOI – Internationalist Workers’ Group (4/21/2022)
